Head of regional goverment after summit meeting with Spain's PM Pedro Sánchez: 'I'm leaving empty-handed'

Two years and two months since his last visit to La Moncloa palace in Madrid, Juanma Moreno met again last Friday with the Spanish prime minister and the script barely departed from that of their two previous meetings. "I'm leaving empty-handed," stated the president of the Junta de Andalucía after an hour and a half meeting with Pedro Sánchez.

Moreno appeared before journalists at La Moncloa after the meeting and pointed out that he was leaving without any concrete commitments from Sánchez. Despite his assurances that he will always attend whenever summoned by the PM, Moreno said he considers that this format of meetings without an agenda and without concrete answers or commitments for future actions to be of little useful purpose and ineffective. "I would have preferred a formal gathering of regional presidents," admitted the head of Andalucía's regional government.

Pedro Sánchez has pledged to convene a presidential get-together in October, although a date has yet to be set, to specifically address the housing crisis. The Junta de Andalucía and other regions governed by the Partido Popular (PP) also want the issue of regional funding to be included, something the Andalusian president mentioned at their meeting. "It would be a mistake not to agree on the agenda."

Still, until the meeting is officially convened, Sánchez and Moreno met again last Friday after more than two years without doing so. As it was a meeting scheduled from La Moncloa palace, the president of the Junta attended with the expectation that the PM would be the one to start the meeting with a specific initiative, but this was not the case. Moreno found the head of the central government unwilling to take the initiative, according to sources in the Junta, where it is feared that the decision to convene a meeting next month of all the regional presidents had no other objective than to buy Sánchez some time.

Although any sense of harmony between the two governments has always been conspicuous by its absence, on this occasion the discrepancy had one main bone of contention: the financing agreement for Catalonia settled in time for Salvador Illa's investiture. This agreement has set off alarm bells in Andalucía, the third worst-financed region in Spain, which is now doubly threatened if the Catalan quota finally materialises.

Regional financing, despite Andalucía's refusal to engage in bilateral negotiations because its government believes that this issue should be agreed among all the regions, not one-by-one with central government, was nevertheless one of the central topics raised at the meeting.

The Andalusian president presented a 53-page document entitled 'Andalucía for equality' that contained 100 pending claims and new proposals from the Andalusian government on matters that required state input, although the first matter he raised was the request to withdraw the one-off funding for Catalonia that is now on the table. According to Junta sources, Sánchez thanked Moreno for the frankness of his position. During the meeting, the Prime Minister made assurances that there will be solutions to compensate the rest of the regions, although details were not forthcoming.

Juanma Moreno continued to press his point home, stressing that this is a proposal that, in his opinion, is bad for Catalonia, for Spain as a whole and for Andalucía "which will be the big payer of the quota." In his view the agreed system for Catalonia weakens Spain, as the state will not be able to apply the principle of solidarity and fairness, and this is the main reason why the pro-independence supporters are calling for it. "Andalucía will be clearly defeated if this quota comes to fruition, but so will the whole system, which would lose more than 30 billion euros," he said.

Moreno emphasised that this is a proposal that does not belong to Catalonia alone, and that the future of that region cannot be built with one part of its society and by dismantling the cohesion that has been built throughout the country. "Andalucía has the obligation to stand up in defence of equality among all Spaniards," he said, before warning that his region, as the most populous in Spain, will use its weight to ensure that this proposal is not carried out.

At the meeting, Juanma Moreno put other issues on the table. Among them was immigration, on which he called for maximum coordination and transparency. "It cannot be that we find out about it from the media," he said, referring to the contingents of immigrants and asylum seekers that central government sends to Andalucía from other areas such as the Canary Islands.

He also demanded commitment from central government regarding the pending railway infrastructure projects in Andalucía, among which he highlighted the coastal train along the Costa del Sol, the high-speed train connection between Seville, Huelva and the Algarve, the connection of Seville city to its airport and the Mediterranean arc (transport links covering all major urban centres on the Med).

Moreno also called for an increase in the electricity distribution network, the necessary hydraulic work to deal with the drought crisis and the co-financing of dependency on equal terms with the rest of the regions around Spain.