The plenary session of the Parlament approved the Autonomous Budgets for 2025 on Wednesday, the second under the governance of the ‘popular’ Marga Prohens, with the support of Vox, putting an end to half a year of budget extension.
The final approval of the Autonomous accounts for 2025, amounting to 7.469 million euros, a 2% increase compared to the 2024 accounts, comes just a day before the seven-month mark since the President of the Govern, Marga Prohens, on December 10th of last year, announced in the plenary session that she was withdrawing the Budget project due to the lack of support from her investiture partners at that time.
The withdrawal of the Budget bill was the climax of a controversy sparked by Vox’s intention, through amendments in the simplification decree, to eliminate Catalan as the vehicular language in education, which the PP approved by mistake.
Santiago Abascal’s party set this linguistic issue as a red line to approve the accounts. At that time, however, the PP managed to get the left’s support to approve the simplification decree without the mistakenly approved amendments in exchange for not repealing the democratic memory law, starting new negotiations with the intention of extending the budget extension as little as possible.
Seven months later, the Govern has managed to push through the Budgets for this year after agreeing with Vox on linguistic measures, against the European Green Deal and the fight against illegal immigration, as well as the expansion of some bonuses and other tax measures.
Among other issues, during the processing of the accounts in the regional chamber, at the request of Vox, a new allocation of 21 million euros has been introduced for the language free choice plan, half a million euros for dental tests on migrants to determine their age, and the extension of bonuses in the inheritance tax.
Furthermore, during the live amendments debate, at the request of MÉS per Mallorca, the elimination of allowances for members of the Govern and senior officials attending meetings of entities affiliated with the ministries has been approved unanimously, and an initiative by Vox, which was initially rejected in committee, for IB3 to produce a documentary on republican repression.
In the last three days and after debating over 1,400 live amendments, a total of 31 amendments from parliamentary groups have been approved.
Aside from the content of the accounts, the debate on the Autonomous Budgets has been marked by the public altercation on Monday between Vox’s spokesperson, Manuela Cañadas, and the deputy Idoia Ribas, which ended with the latter announcing her departure from the group, and her absence in the last two days.
THE HIGHEST SOCIAL EXPENDITURE IN HISTORY
The non-financial budget, approved by the Parlament on October 22nd last year, amounts to 6,562.88 million euros (an increase of 197.4 million, 3.01%), while the financial budget, intended to finance debt, stands at 906.3 million (a decrease of 48.9 million compared to the 2024 budgets, a 5.1% drop).
The social expenditure, allocated to education, health, social services, and housing, is the highest in history (4,438.7 million euros), exceeding the 2024 figure by 216.3 million (+5.1%).
The education budget will be 1,416.5 million euros, 63.8 million more than in 2024 (4.7%). As for the health sector, it will have a budget of 2,445.9 million euros, an increase of 77.6 million (3.3%).
The budget for social services will be 389.6 million euros, 37.1 million more than in the previous year (10.5%), and the allocation for housing will be 186.7 million, representing an increase of 37.8 million (25.4%).
FUENTE