Catalan Budget Rolls Over Into 2027 as Nov. 29 Election Stalls Talks

The Generalitat (Catalan government) will begin 2027 without a new budget and will extend its current accounts instead, the Catalan daily Ara reports. The Nov. 29 general election has made a deal with the government’s partners, ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia) and Comuns, impossible for now. Talks will resume after the vote, which means new accounts will not be approved for a few months.

Catalonia has been here before. Budgets were extended in 2024, 2025 and 2026, and the current ones only came into force in July of this year.

How an extended budget works

Before the end of December the government has to issue an extension decree setting out the conditions for running on the old accounts. The decree takes effect on Jan. 1 and legally guarantees that the administration keeps working and that public services continue while there is no new budget.

Under the decree, the initial spending credits of every Generalitat department and of its public sector carry over into the new year. Money for programs or actions that end at the close of 2026 is the exception and does not roll over.

This year’s accounts were themselves a long time coming. The 2023 budget was not approved until March of that year, and the budgets that followed were extensions of it until July, when the current accounts finally came into force. Those accounts will now be the basis for operating in 2027.

What the election delay blocks

Calling the general election also froze work on a new financing system that would give Catalonia more than 4.6 billion in extra funding, according to Ara.

It also stops the planned cancellation of up to 17.104 billion euros of Catalan debt owed to the Fondo de Liquidez Autonómica, or FLA (Autonomous Liquidity Fund). That is the second-largest FLA debt of any region after Andalusia, at 18.791 billion. Writing it off would save Catalonia more than 200 million a year in financial costs.

What it means for residents

For people living in Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia, the extension decree keeps the administration and public services running from Jan. 1. What it does not provide is new spending: anything that depends on a fresh budget has to wait for a deal after the election.

In recent extended years, ERC chose not to sign a full budget with the PSC so as not to look too close to it. Instead it backed a series of credit supplements, extra spending added on top of the rolled-over accounts. Last year those supplements came to a total of 3,936.7 million euros, which softened the effect of the extension. The most recent was 467.9 million euros, and the two before it were 2,168 million and 1,301 million. In 2024 there were two, one of 1,985.9 million and one of 142 million.

Each supplement went to specific, agreed purposes. All were paid for with higher-than-expected revenue for the year, most of it from the financing system, through the 2025 advance and the 2023 settlement.

A long record of late budgets

Ara counts only two budgets approved on time since 2010, meaning before Dec. 31 of the previous year: those for 2010 and 2022. The 2022 accounts were passed when Jaume Giró was minister of economy and Pere Aragonès was president. As in earlier years, the obstacle now is the lack of enough support in parliament to close a deal.

What happens next

The government must approve the extension decree before the end of December so it can take effect on Jan. 1. Budget negotiations with ERC and Comuns will only start after the Nov. 29 election.

Source: Ara