José Luis Martínez-Almeida has not balanced the municipal accounts, something that has not happened since 2011. The Madrid City Council has closed the 2022 financial year in the red.
For the first time in 12 years, the capital of Spain has closed its annual accounts in the negative, with a deficit of 357 million euros.
This is clear from a document sent by the municipal Treasury Department to the Treasury Ministry a few weeks ago and to which EL PAÍS has had access.
The report, of 2,149 pages and corresponding to the fourth quarter, reveals a fiscal hole of 357,448,737.29 euros.
This anomaly will not have major consequences.
Both the European Union and the Government of Pedro Sánchez have loosened the corset of the law on budgetary stability and financial sustainability, which required rigidity in the accounts and prevented deviations,
It is the first time since 2011 that the Madrid economy ends a year with negative numbers.
Twelve years ago, the accounts closed with a deficit of 754 million, hit mainly by the increase in spending due to the mammoth projects of the Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón (PP) era, with the new Madrid Río park as the main investment and the final touches of the burial of the M-30.
At that time, the popular ones blamed the deficit on the central State, governed by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
This time, according to sources from the Treasury area of the Madrid City Council, with Almeida as mayor, Pedro Sánchez is to blame for the public deficit in 2022.
"Sánchez's budgetary policies applied to Madrid in 2022 have caused an initial deficit, which is what is communicated to the Ministry of Finance in the fourth quarter," these municipal sources underline.
"The Government of Sánchez causes the deficit in this last year, by deciding to impute in the year 2022 and, just in this electoral year, the compensation of the negative liquidation of the collection of 2020 for an amount of 271 million euros".
They also accuse the Government of Sánchez of a "disastrous" basic regulation with the capital gains tax.
"In addition," these sources add, "the Government acts arbitrarily when, against the interests of the citizens of Madrid, it quantifies the aid received as a result of the emergency actions by Filomena at 1.46 million euros
.
"
Until 2021, the Madrid City Council had five of its own taxes.
The real estate tax (IBI);
the tax on economic activities (IAE);
the tax on mechanical traction vehicles (IVTM);
the tax on constructions, installations and works (ICIO) and the capital gains tax that, basically, taxes the revaluation that, year after year, homes usually experience.
The capital gains tax was annulled in 2021 by the Constitutional Court.
It meant an annual average of 500 million euros for the coffers of the capital of Spain, 10% of the budget.
The amount was equivalent to the investments of the city works plan from 2019 to 2027. The capital gains tax was the second collection tax in Madrid, after the IBI, with some 1,500 million euros.
On January 26, at a press conference, the Treasury delegate at the Town Hall, Engracia Hidalgo, was "satisfied" with the percentage of Budget executed.
Never before has the City Council of the capital of Spain had such a large budget.
In 2022, 5,468 million euros were reached, 510 million more than in 2021 and 1,334 million more than in 2018, the last full year of Manuela Carmena's term.
The 2022 accounts, however, have not balanced.
In 2018, with Carmena in the City Council, Madrid closed with a surplus of 1,000 million.
In 2019, with five months of Carmena and seven of Almeida, the positive balance was 549 million.
In 2020 and in the middle of the pandemic, 224.9 million.
In 2021, the balance was still positive, with 70.70 million euros.
In 2022 and for the first time in 12 years, the balance is negative: 357,
“This demonstrates the catastrophe in the management that we have been denouncing,” Miguel Montejo, spokesman for the Hacienda de Más Madrid, recounted by phone.
“Almeida did not want to take charge of the problem that was in the Tax Agency and now what we see is that there are 357 million deficits and it is something that has never happened.
They come from having the highest budget of all time.
They had plenty of room.
These are four lost years.
What have the 5,000 million been spent on?
2023 budgets, extended
In the last quarter of the year, the focus of all State administrations is centered on the Treasury department, where economists and civil servants complete arduous weeks of work to balance the accounts.
Above them rests a large Excel chart.
There are placed the income, the expenses and, above all, the ideology of who governs.
Madrid budgeted 5,703 million euros for 2023, 2.9% more than last year, a figure higher than that of La Rioja and Cantabria combined.
However, Almeida has not been able to carry out the accounts.
The Budgets of 2023 are those of 2022.
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