The Government of Spain, in the Council of Ministers, has approved this week a Royal Decree-Law to update deliveries on behalf of the Autonomous Communities and Cities of the year 2025, which shows the commitment of the Government to provide territorial entities with sufficient resources to provide quality public services.
In particular, the Autonomous City of Melilla will receive 8,431,977 euros this year and all the Autonomous Communities and Cities will receive the largest deliveries in history with 147,412 million euros, which is an increase of 9.5% compared to those received last year. This is the figure that the First Vice-President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, already transferred to the Autonomous Communities at the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council held in July 2024.
In the case of Melilla, this is the third consecutive increase, given that in the year 2023 the amount in this concept received by the city amounted to 7,097,106 euros and last year it increased to 7,457,135 euros.
As explained by the Ministry of Finance, the amount to be received by the territories must be added to that corresponding to the liquidation of 2023, which is the difference between the estimate of income (on account deliveries) and the real income when the accounting year ends, and which reaches 11,692 million euros. Therefore, the Autonomous Communities will receive this year a total funding of 158,167 million, the highest in history, with an increase of 2.5% compared to last year.
The updating of the deliveries on account takes place in a scenario of budgetary extension. In this way, the Government has once again detached the approval of the Budgets from the updating of resources for the Autonomous Communities, something that the PP government always rejected that could be done. However, the facts have once again denied the position of the Executive of Rajoy and the deliveries on account, as happened last year also, have been updated despite the existence of a situation of budgetary extension.
In the event that the theses of the PP government had been maintained and the deliveries on account of the approval of the Budgets had not been decoupled, the Autonomous Communities would receive 21,518 million less on account this year.
Therefore, the progressive government takes another step in its defense of the financial autonomy of the Autonomous Communities as it also did during the worst pandemic in a century by maintaining unchanged the deliveries on account in that year despite the fall in GDP, also assuming the negative liquidations that were generated as a result of the fall in revenue. Or the approval of direct resources amounting to almost 30 billion euros to deal with the consequences of COVID and which have meant the largest transfer of funds outside the financing system.
In fact, in the seven years of Pedro Sánchez’s government, the autonomous communities and cities received 300 billion euros more funding than in the seven years of Mariano Rajoy’s government, which is 47.4% more.