The acceleration of global politics does not contemplate the hypothesis of the brakes, judging by the emergence of Donald Trump. And neither does Spanish politics, with endless anger—despite the fact that the cold charisma of the statistics tells a story of economic prosperity—and in a first year of the coalition government marked by an accumulation of episodes of stress: amnesty— climate catastrophe. María Jesús Montero (Seville, 58 years old) bursts into the Goya room of the Ministry of Finance like a gale. The vice president, Minister of Finance and number two of the PSOE is responsible for some of the key aspects of the legislature – regional financing, budget and tax reform – but throughout the hour-long interview she will talk at length about it in terms of political management.
Ask. There is a mixture of incompetence and lies in the management of Carlos Mazón and his team. And a formidable unrest among Valencians, which extends to the central government. Has the crisis management been adequate?
Answer. We have focused on responding to people who are having a hard time, on saving productive fabric and on deploying aid to rebuild the devastated area: there will be time to see how the decisions were made. The Valencians would not understand a continuous fight. It is time for unity, to use all the power of the State and the Army and to add it to the capillarity of the Generalitat.
P. Mazón, who began with that conciliatory speech, . And senior officials of the Government and the EMU, too.
R. Don’t expect reproaches from me. I insist that there will be time for investigative commissions.
P. The Government defends that the mixed management formula is more efficient; That is what the autonomous State is like. But tell that to those who believe that Pedro Sánchez should have taken the reins.
R. We have been present in Valencia from the first minute, with all the deployment of forces and the Army. It would have been meaningless to get into a fight of competition and continuous friction.
P. Did pandemic complaints weigh on the decision not to activate the state of alarm?
R. No not at all.
P. Isn’t there a certain political calculation in leaving Mazón in charge?
R. Mazón was responsible for activating the highest level of alarm if the situation overwhelmed him. And he didn’t.
P. Do you understand the discomfort in ?
R. I understand the indignation of people who lose their home, their business, their car, their loved ones. But the Government has been there. In full shock It is essential to make correct decisions, but effectiveness in subsequent days is also key to limit the impact of the devastation: cleaning tasks, recovering supplies. Desperation is logical when help does not arrive immediately, and it is impossible to arrive immediately. That frustration can end in anger when there are crowds. These are dangerous moments due to the wave of emotionality. I find it outrageous that the ultras infiltrated those protests.
P. They weren’t just ultras.
R. No, but.
P. Did Zarzuela consult you about the visit? Did they raise any objections?
R. Yes, we coordinate. And no, we had no objections. But these official visits to the affected areas are something that we must review.
P. What did the Government do wrong?
R. Look, you can always do better. We may not have communicated well, but the Government was more focused on helping than telling the story. It will take time to return to normal: the Valencians demand that this time be as short as possible.
P. Is it necessary to accelerate aid?
R. With the experience of the pandemic, the objective is to mobilize maximum resources to return to normality quickly. The decree law mobilizes 10.6 billion. We count on the collaboration of Brussels to avoid fiscal restrictions, that is key. So is the budget: no one would understand that the Generalitat did not direct its public accounts towards reconstruction. Nor that we do not have the next State Budgets focused on resolving this as soon as possible. The emergency requires it.
P. The PP says that linking aid and the budget is blackmail. And Together.
R. The president has not linked the 10.6 billion to the budget. The budgets are not ready and yet the aid is going to arrive, it is an extraordinary expense and Brussels understands that. All of us should also understand that great crises measure the greatness of a country. We have to stop politicking. You need a budget and it seems inappropriate to call that blackmail. There is a time to demand responsibility and to confront, but now the budget is needed and it is unpresentable, unempathetic and absolutely disoriented to talk about blackmail.
P. Sánchez tends to launch attacks at key moments. Would there be elections without budgets?
R. Electoral calls are the power of the president. In my opinion, public accounts are essential to consolidate the economic dynamism of Spain. We grow three times as much as the EU. We have a record of employment. The dana shows that we must focus on the green transition: one of the lessons is that climate change is not a threat but the harsh reality.
P. Are they going to touch the communities’ deficit objectives?
R. We are negotiating a tax reform. And we are negotiating with the groups.
P. Ábalos, Errejón, la dana… Do you see the left demoralized?
R. Progressives have to be more motivated than ever with what is happening in the world. The left has the capacity to combine growth, redistribution and sanitation of public accounts: Spain’s numbers are there. Disasters reveal why and why we pay taxes.
P. I asked him about Ábalos, about Errejón.
R. They are painful cases, which embarrass us all and which force the parties to act with absolute speed. The PSOE and Sumar have done it, in contrast to the corruption of the PP.
P. Sumar is going down in the polls. Do you see a Government viable without that well-articulated space?
R. The alternative to a right-wing government like that of many autonomies is the progressive coalition. This requires a permanent reflection process: in the PSOE, through its Congress. The left to the left of the PSOE must do so too; It needs to accommodate different sensitivities. An example: Podemos requires by law to reduce the rental price by 40%. It is a maximum approach in negotiation, to differentiate, but politics is the art of the possible, and I hope that Podemos ends up supporting a budget based on progressive policies even if it does not satisfy them 100%. If not, we make things easy for the ultras.
P. Does the Executive run the risk of abusing the “the ultras are coming”?
R. A leader has to anticipate events. Sánchez has highlighted a real risk: the ultras are present in several European governments, there we have Trump. This wave has poisoned democracies through hoaxes and misinformation, as we have seen in Valencia.
P. In the presentation for its congress, the PSOE tiptoes through core debates such as the unique financing of Catalonia. Is there an explanation deficit in ?
R. This agreement has been explained by Salvador Illa. And it is a new look at financing.
P. Is it a concert? Does it mean leaving the common regime?
R. The agreement has a component of solidarity that does not exist in the Basque and Navarrese concert. All the reforms of the system have deepened greater self-government of the autonomies, with different sensitivities.
P. ERC explains it differently. And the PP, and even some socialist barons, disagree with his conclusion.
R. It is legal for everyone to interpret it for their audience. But the document is there. And it says what it says: that we are going to start with more transfer of personal income tax, with the aim of more self-government in Catalonia. That is scalable to other autonomies. The fundamental thing is to guarantee equality in the provision of public services. And that, as now, more than 800 extra euros per inhabitant is not allowed in some communities.
P. How do you avoid entering into a fiscal race to the bottom like the Inheritance Tax with personal income tax?
R. We do it with Heritage, taxing in the regions that had suppressed it. And in Successions we propose a minimum rate. But it is incompatible to lower taxes and at the same time ask for more resources from the State.
P. How much extra money do you have to put in?
R. This is not the time to give figures, but to rethink the model: combine uniqueness with a comparable provision of services, and ask the autonomies for responsibility. The tax pressure is four points lower than the European average, hence the EU’s insistence on tax reform. We cannot ask for more money from Europe and not be willing to raise income.
P. Are you personally comfortable with this pact with ERC? How do you defend it in Andalusia?
R. I’m comfortable. You have to defend it normally, without tension. With the current model I can have the same discomfort when I go to the territories and see a malfunction of public services. With health, the Andalusian Government throws the ball out; blame everything on the central government. Since the pandemic, this pathology has grown in the relationship between autonomies and the Government. This confrontation is unfair: the autonomies have received 300,000 million more since Sánchez was president.
P. He accuses the autonomies of institutional disloyalty.
R. It’s obvious. They do not assume their responsibility and blame Madrid [Gobierno central] from the poor functioning of waiting lists, dependency or the student ratio. And they have more resources than ever.
P. There are those who accuse the Government of reforming the territorial model through the back door. Since the declaration of Granada in 2013, the PSOE has not said which is the destination of measures as ambitious as the amnesty and the pact with ERC.
R. Granada is still valid. The PSOE presentation talks about delving into the territorial model, about federal advances. It is necessary to specify how, but financing is an important element, with a networked Tax Agency, or the reform of the Senate and multilateral bodies for shared decision-making. The PSOE has never taken steps towards recentralization; others do, as we have seen with the dana. You have to ask the main opposition party what it wants to do; Vox even denies that there should be autonomies. There are more relevant debates: some autonomies have accelerated the privatization of healthcare; others, from the university.
P. We just saw Trump win after a strong setback by the Democrats. Is progressive discourse broken?
R. The arrow of progress does not always go up. I am concerned about this anti-political movement: it is taxes that allow the Army to come to the rescue of Valencia; Slogans like “the people save the people” are misleading. Public policies must be vindicated against those who delegitimize institutions. We must wage war against this pessimistic inertia. You have to rebel against that.
