What you’ll find here
What being part of Spain means for Catalonia, in figures, compared with the rest of the Spanish state. We’ve put them in five sections:
- What we pay and what comes back: the fiscal deficit, what we pay in and what we get back, and where we end up once regional funding is shared out.
- The investment that never arrives: what the Spanish state budgets for Catalonia and what it actually does.
- Getting around: trains (this year’s crashes, Rodalies and the Mediterranean Corridor) and cars (the lorries, the motorway tolls we paid for half a century and the roadworks that never end).
- Laws and schools: the Catalan laws the Spanish state takes to the Constitutional Court, and what is spent per pupil.
- Language: the Spanish the PP and the courts want in Catalan schools, and where it all comes from.
Each figure shows, in large type, the number and what it is about; below it, the facts and the comparison; under “What it means”, what it implies, which is our reading; and the sources, which you can open. Where the arithmetic is ours, we say so.
In short
- €2,700 per person a year that never comes back
- 54% of the promised investment delivered
- 1 in 2 Rodalies trains late
- 52 years of tolls on the AP-7
- 191 state challenges to our laws
- 25% Spanish in schools, imposed by the judges
Our opinion: we pay like the rich, they treat us like a colony, and they tell us which language our children must learn in.
What we pay and what comes back
€21,092m of fiscal deficit
It is Catalonia’s fiscal deficit: what Catalans paid the Spanish state and didn’t get back in spending. It is 8.2% of Catalan GDP, according to the Catalan government’s count (the monetary-flow method). The average since 1986: 8.1% every year.
What it means: It is money that leaves home every year and never comes back as schools, hospitals, care homes or trains.
Sources: 3Cat, 27-2-2026 · VilaWeb, 27-2-2026
€2,700 per Catalan per year
Shared out among everyone who lives there, the 2022 deficit comes to about €2,700 per person. Or €58 million a day (our arithmetic, with the population from Idescat, the Catalan statistics office).
What it means: A family of four puts in about €10,800 a year that never comes back: money that doesn’t reach their school, their health centre or their train.
Sources: VilaWeb, 27-2-2026 · Idescat, population on 1 January
19.3% of the state’s revenue
In 2022 Catalonia provided 19.3% of the Spanish state’s revenue and received 14.0% of its spending. It is home to 16.3% of the population.
What it means: We pay one in every five euros the state takes in, and get back one in seven.
Sources: 3Cat, 27-2-2026 · VilaWeb, 27-2-2026
3rd to 8th in funding per inhabitant
Before Spain’s regional funding is shared out, Catalonia is 3rd of the 15 common-regime regions in revenue per inhabitant. Afterwards, 8th. In 2024 it put €2,315 million net into the system, 7.3% of its tax revenue.
What it means: However much you generate, the system pushes you back: regions that put in less end up with more money per inhabitant than Catalonia.
Sources: Converses a Catalunya, 10-8-2026 · El Debate, 5-8-2026
95% of the health and education budget
The 2022 fiscal deficit is the equivalent of 95% of what the Catalan government budgets for health and education together in 2026 (€22,196 million), and one and a half times the health budget alone (our arithmetic).
What it means: Every year, the equivalent of almost everything the country’s public hospitals, health centres, schools and secondary schools cost goes away. With that money, waiting lists and packed classrooms would be a different conversation.
Sources: Catalan government, 2026 budget · VilaWeb, 27-2-2026
€9,892m of deficit, according to Madrid
The Spanish government’s latest official figures, for 2014: Catalonia lost €9,892 million, while the Basque Country, with its own tax system, gained €3,387 million.
What it means: Even Madrid’s own accounts don’t come out well. That is why the Spanish government hasn’t published any since: in 2026 the Catalan government was still complaining that it doesn’t hand over all the data.
Sources: El Español, 7-9-2017 · 3Cat, 27-2-2026
The investment that never arrives
€6,400m of promised investment the state never delivered (2015–2023)
From 2015 to 2023 the Spanish state budgeted €13,943 million of investment in Catalonia and carried out €7,521 million, 54%. About €6,400 million stayed on paper (our arithmetic, from the Catalan government’s data).
What it means: Every year the budget promises us works, and every year almost half of them stay in the drawer. The next year, they promise them all over again.
Sources: Catalan government, data on state investment in Catalonia (Excel) · Catalan government, note on state investment, 19-12-2024 (PDF)
45% of the promised investment, delivered
In 2023 the Spanish state carried out 45% of the investment it had budgeted for Catalonia (€1,028 million of €2,276 million): the lowest share of any region. In Madrid, 165%, or 211% counting the bail-out of its radial motorways.
What it means: Every project that doesn’t happen is another year of waiting: more queues, more delays and more hours lost on the roads and the trains.
Sources: NacióDigital, 25-7-2024 · 3Cat, 24-7-2024
€163 of investment per Catalan
Spanish state investment per inhabitant in 2025: €163 in Catalonia, €452 in Madrid and €313 on average. Catalonia got 8.6% of it, its lowest share in ten years.
What it means: Someone in Madrid gets almost three times as much investment as a Catalan (our arithmetic). That means metro lines, trains and roads, and the businesses that set up there.
Sources: 3Cat, 17-7-2026 · El Món, 19-7-2026
Getting around
Trains
115 dead in two high-speed crashes in 2026
Adamuz (Córdoba), 18 January 2026: an Iryo train derails and an Alvia hits it, 46 dead. Urda (Toledo), 28 October 2026: an AVE runs into an Iryo stopped on the track, 69 dead, a figure still provisional. Both on the Madrid–Seville line, run by Adif, the state rail-infrastructure company. The investigations haven’t finished.
What it means: The first findings point to a broken rail and an order from Adif’s control centre: both the state’s job. And the minister hasn’t resigned.
Sources: VilaWeb, 8-4-2026 · 3Cat, 29-10-2026 · 3Cat, 30-10-2026 · Público, 30-10-2026
1 dead on Rodalies, from an AP-7 wall that fell on the track
Gelida, 20 January 2026: an R4 train hits a wall of the AP-7 motorway that had fallen onto the track. A 28-year-old trainee driver dies. The motorway belongs to the Spanish state. The working hypothesis is water pressure after the rain, and the investigation hasn’t finished.
What it means: Afterwards, Rodalies came to a halt: days without trains all over Catalonia. The Spanish government admitted that there was maintenance work that “s’haurien d’haver fet i no s’han fet” (“should have been done and hasn’t been”).
Sources: 3Cat, 20-1-2026 · Ara, 23-1-2026 (in Spanish; paywalled) · 3Cat, 26-1-2026
1992 the year of the signalling system that failed at Urda
The Madrid–Seville line still uses the LZB signalling system from 1992: it is the only high-speed line that keeps it. The ministry had promised to replace it with a new one, ERTMS, by April 2026, and the work isn’t finished. It isn’t proven that the new system would have prevented the crash.
What it means: High-speed safety, too, ends up in the drawer of broken promises.
Sources: Xataka, 28-10-2026
€131m for track maintenance, left unspent (2024)
In 2024 Adif had €1,193 million to maintain the rail network and spent €1,062 million, 89%. €131 million went unused.
What it means: The money to maintain the tracks was there, in the budget. It wasn’t used.
Sources: The Objective, 14-2-2026
36% of the Mediterranean Corridor in service
Of the Mediterranean Corridor’s 1,838 kilometres, 658 are in service, according to the ministry (March 2026). Rajoy promised the Catalan sections for “la primavera de 2020” (“spring 2020”), and Barcelona–Valencia in European gauge has been promised for 2021, 2026, 2027 and now 2028. In 2025, €1,288 million went into it, more than ever.
What it means: The train that was meant to link us with Europe always arrives next year. Meanwhile, Spain’s high-speed network starts in Madrid.
Sources: La Moncloa, 22-4-2026 · La Moncloa, 28-3-2017 · 3Cat, 20-11-2025 · elDiario.es, 29-8-2026
80% of the «Mediterranean Corridor» spent on lines to Madrid (2017)
In 2017 the ministry said it had invested €13,500 million in the Mediterranean Corridor. The Valencian government did the sums: 80% had gone on high-speed sections that link up with Madrid, and only about €2,600 million, 19%, on the coastal corridor. Of the work put out to tender from 2012 to 2016, only 5% had been done.
What it means: They call it the Mediterranean Corridor and build us the high-speed line to Madrid. They rob us, and take us for fools as well.
Sources: El País, 29-3-2017
€935m of works in Madrid, sent to the EU as the Mediterranean Corridor
In February 2017, the Catalan and Valencian governments complained that the Spanish government had sent the European Union, as Mediterranean Corridor projects, works in Madrid: the Atocha–Chamartín high-speed tunnel and the southern access to Atocha, “unes obres que costen 935 milions d’euros” (“works that cost €935 million”). Josep Vicent Boira, later the Spanish government’s commissioner for the corridor: “Madrid sempre guanya” (“Madrid always wins”).
What it means: Even the Mediterranean Corridor goes through Madrid. And they sell it to us as if it were for us.
Sources: Via Empresa (ACN), 10-2-2017 · VilaWeb, 11-2-2017
2008 the year rail access to the port of Barcelona was promised
Rail access to the port of Barcelona was promised in 2008. A 2016 start date and a 2018 completion date were both missed. The €730 million project was approved in October 2024, and the works are planned for 2027 to 2032.
What it means: While lorries fill the AP-7, the freight train still doesn’t reach the port.
1 in 2 Rodalies trains late
In 2025 only half of Barcelona’s Rodalies trains ran on time (less than 3 minutes late): the worst of Renfe’s 13 commuter networks. In Madrid, 68%.
What it means: Getting to work, to class or to the doctor late every other day. People who depend on the train lose hours every week; those who can, take the car.
Sources: Diari de Tarragona, 28-1-2026
37.6% of Adif’s works done
From 2015 to 2024, Adif, the state rail-infrastructure company, carried out 37.6% of the rail investment it had budgeted for Catalonia. In Madrid, 77.6%.
What it means: The works not done today are tomorrow’s breakdowns, disruptions and stranded trains.
Sources: Verificat, 9-10-2026
16.8% of commuter-rail investment
From 1990 to 2018, Barcelona’s commuter rail, with 26% of the passengers and 20% of the network, got 16.8% of the Spanish state’s commuter-rail investment. Madrid’s, with 58% of the passengers and 15% of the network, got 47.8%.
Sources: 3Cat, 7-3-2025
35 years of Rodalies in one year’s deficit
One year’s fiscal deficit is the equivalent of 35 years of Spanish state investment in Rodalies: €600 million in 2025, according to the ministry (our arithmetic).
What it means: In a single year, what Rodalies would get over a whole working life goes away.
Sources: La Moncloa, 29-1-2026 · 3Cat, 27-2-2026
Cars and roads
11,510 lorries a day through La Jonquera, half of all those crossing the Pyrenees
In 2023, 23,252 lorries a day crossed the border with France: 11,510 through La Jonquera, 49.5%, and 9,990 through Irun. Counting Puigcerdà and Bossost, 52% go through Catalonia. Rail carries only 1.9% of the goods crossing the Pyrenees by land (our arithmetic).
What it means: Spain’s gateway to Europe is here, and it is a road. For half a century we paid for it with tolls, and the freight train still isn’t there.
Sources: Franco-Spanish Pyrenees traffic observatory, 2023 data (PDF, in Spanish)
2.3 times as many lorries per kilometre as the average State road
In 2024, each kilometre of State road in Catalonia carried 4,841 lorries a day; the Spanish average was 2,076. Catalonia is the region with the most lorry-kilometres on State roads, and the AP-7 is the road with the most lorries in Spain.
What it means: Catalan roads carry the weight of Spain’s trade with Europe.
Sources: Spanish Ministry of Transport, 2024 traffic map (in Spanish) · 3Cat, 5-3-2025
44% of Spain’s motorway tolls were paid in Catalonia (2016)
In 2016 about €800 million of the €1,812 million paid in motorway tolls across Spain was collected in Catalonia. Catalonia had one in five kilometres of toll road, but only 7% of the state’s free dual carriageways.
What it means: While free dual carriageways were being built across the rest of Spain, here we paid to drive.
Sources: 3Cat, 18-6-2018
52 years of tolls on the AP-7 and AP-2
Spain’s first toll motorway was Montgat–Mataró, in 1969. The state’s tolls on the AP-7 and AP-2 only ended on 1 September 2021, after the concession had been extended twice.
What it means: We paid for the motorway for more than half a century: by the time it was free, it had been paid for many times over.
Sources: Diari de Tarragona, 27-8-2021 · 3Cat, 29-8-2021
+45% more traffic on the AP-7 in five toll-free years
Since the tolls went, traffic on the AP-7 has grown by 45%, and lorries by up to 61% at Martorell. The fourth lane between Martorell and Vilafranca, €140 million, is still only a project, and the deadline for drawing it up has passed.
What it means: The motorway we paid for is now free and jammed, and the works to widen it don’t arrive.
Sources: 3Cat, 1-9-2026 · 3Cat, 5-3-2025 · 3Cat, 5-4-2026
€30m a year to maintain the former toll motorway
To maintain the AP-7 and AP-2 in Catalonia, the ministry has five contracts, about €30 million a year. Catalonia’s traffic authority, the Servei Català de Trànsit, has had to ask it to “repari amb celeritat” (“repair swiftly”) the potholes. In June 2026 it approved a €216 million package for three years.
What it means: They do maintain them: too little, too late, and after complaints.
Sources: 3Cat, 26-6-2026 · VilaWeb, 1-4-2025 · Diari de Tarragona, 16-6-2026
15 years of works to open the A-27 through the Coll de Lilla
The A-27 dual carriageway between Valls and Montblanc, with the Coll de Lilla tunnel, opened in October 2023 after “more than fifteen years of works”. On the A-2, the Medinyà–Orriols section was started in 2010 to be built in 20 months; the contract was cancelled that same year, and work only resumed in 2015.
What it means: The Spanish state’s works in Catalonia move at a snail’s pace: its promises are counted in decades.
Sources: Diari de Tarragona, 23-10-2023 · NacióDigital, 22-7-2010
Laws and schools
191 state challenges against Catalonia
From 1980 to June 2026, the Spanish state took 668 laws and decisions of the regions to the Constitutional Court. 191 were Catalonia’s, 28.6%: more than any other region’s. Madrid’s: 18.
What it means: What the Catalan Parliament passes, like its cap on rents, can end up struck down in Madrid. Your vote for the Catalan Parliament counts for less than you think.
Sources: Spanish Ministry of Territorial Policy, disputes bulletin, Q2 2026 (PDF, in Spanish) · 3Cat, 10-3-2022
€8,116 per state-school pupil
Spending per pupil in state schools (2023): €8,116 in Catalonia and €12,484 in the Basque Country, which has its own tax system. 54% more (our arithmetic).
What it means: Less money per pupil means fuller classrooms and less support. Our children will have fewer tools to tell apart the fake news that AI churns out, and fewer chances of finding a good job.
Sources: Spanish Ministry of Education, «Las cifras de la educación en España 2026», table B4.6
Language
50% Spanish in Catalan schools: the PP’s plan
On 19 October 2026 Feijóo signed his “Contract with Spain”: “garantizar la enseñanza del castellano en toda España” (“guarantee the teaching of Spanish throughout Spain”). According to El Mundo, in Catalan schools that means 50% Spanish. He was already saying so in 2022: “La inmersión nunca es cordial: es obligatoria” (“Immersion is never friendly: it is compulsory”), and his model was Galicia, where “el 50% de las clases está en castellano” (“50% of lessons are in Spanish”). In the Catalan Parliament, on 8 October 2026, the PP voted with Vox against strengthening Catalan-medium schooling.
What it means: The end of Catalan-medium schooling. A language not learnt at school gets lost, and with it the culture made in it.
Sources: NacióDigital, 19-10-2026 · El Nacional, 19-10-2026 · Demòcrata, 8-10-2026 · El Liberal, 5-4-2022
25% Spanish in schools, imposed by the judges
In 2020 Catalonia’s High Court (TSJC) ordered the whole Catalan school system to teach at least 25% of classes in Spanish, in a case the Spanish government had started. No law sets it. The Catalan Parliament changed the law in 2022, and in July 2026 the Constitutional Court still hadn’t ruled on it.
What it means: Which language our children learn in isn’t decided by the Parliament we elect: judges and governments in Madrid end up deciding it.
Sources: 3Cat, 28-3-2022 · Revista de Llengua i Dret (EAPC), blog, 16-7-2026
2012 the PP minister who wanted to make Catalan pupils Spanish
In Congress, on 10 October 2012, the PP’s education minister, José Ignacio Wert: “nuestro interés es españolizar a los alumnos catalanes” (“our aim is to make Catalan pupils Spanish”). He then had the Spanish state pay for a private Spanish-language school for anyone who asked, and take the cost out of the Catalan government’s funding. The Constitutional Court struck it down in 2018, on the grounds of who has the power to decide.
What it means: We didn’t make this up: they have been saying it out loud in Congress for years.
Sources: elDiario.es, 10-10-2012 · VilaWeb, 20-2-2018
1716 the decree that treated us as conquered land
On 16 January 1716, with the war over, the Nueva Planta decree abolished Catalonia’s institutions. The official pretext: “the crime of rebellion and the right of conquest”, the same “right of conquest” invoked against Valencia and Aragon in 1707. Spanish became compulsory in the high court, the Audiència.
What it means: Three centuries on, the same treatment: a colony, a territory won by conquest, where the country’s own language gets in the way.
Sources: Enciclopèdia Catalana, «decrets de Nova Planta» (in Catalan) · VilaWeb, 15-1-2016
What if we made our own decisions?
Compared with the states of the European Union, Catalonia is a country of European size and wealth. That doesn’t mean it would all come free: at the end are the sums, including the ones we don’t like.
13 EU states with fewer people than Catalonia
Catalonia had 8,210,710 inhabitants on 1 January 2026. Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta have fewer. It would be the 15th state of 28.
What it means: We are not a small country: we are a country of European size.
Sources: Idescat, population on 1 January · Eurostat, population of the states (demo_gind)
14 EU states with a smaller economy
In 2025 Catalonia’s GDP was €334,765 million. Among others, Portugal, Finland, Greece and Hungary have smaller economies. Just above it is Czechia.
What it means: We have the economy of a mid-sized EU state.
Sources: Idescat, gross domestic product (EU indicators) · Eurostat, GDP of the states (nama_10_gdp)
105% of the EU’s average wealth per person. Spain: 91%
In GDP per person adjusted for purchasing power, Catalonia stood in 2024 at 105% of the EU average: 10th of 28 if it were a state. Spain, at 91%. Eurostat applies Spain’s prices, and life in Catalonia is dearer: with local prices, we would be at the average.
What it means: We generate the wealth of an average European state. Inside Spain, we get dragged towards the back.
Sources: Eurostat, 10-2-2026 · Eurostat, regional methodology
4 of 9 richest EU states per person, smaller than Catalonia
Of the nine EU states with the most wealth per person (2024), four have fewer people than Catalonia: Luxembourg, Ireland, Denmark and Malta. There are small, poor ones too, such as Bulgaria or Latvia.
What it means: Being small is no sentence: wealth depends on what you decide, not on size.
Sources: Eurostat, GDP per person in PPS (tec00114) · Eurostat, population of the states (demo_gind)
8.2% of GDP: more than the EU spends on all public health care
The 2022 fiscal deficit, 8.2% of GDP according to the Catalan government, is the equivalent of more than EU states spend on average on all public health care (7.5% of GDP). The €21,092 million is more than all of Latvia’s public administrations spent that year (€15,840 million), or Estonia’s (€14,561 million), army and pensions included (our arithmetic).
What it means: Every year, the equivalent of a whole state’s budget leaves Catalonia.
Sources: Eurostat, public spending by function (gov_10a_exp) · Eurostat, government spending (gov_10a_main) · VilaWeb, 27-2-2026
1.8% of GDP on research. Denmark, Finland and Austria: over 3%
In 2024 Catalonia put 1.82% of GDP into research and development; Spain, 1.50%, and the EU, 2.26% on average. Denmark, Finland and Austria, between 3.15% and 3.34%.
What it means: Where we put money for the future is one of the things we could decide for ourselves.
8.4% unemployment: less than Spain, more than 23 EU states
In 2025 unemployment in Catalonia was 8.4%, and among under-25s, 19.1%. In Spain, 10.5% and 24.9%. In the EU, 6.0% and 15.2%.
What it means: Labour law and unemployment benefits are decided in Madrid. With a state of our own, fixing it would be up to us too.
Sources: Idescat, unemployment rate (EU indicators) · Eurostat, unemployment of the states (une_rt_a)
€8,400m of margin, not 21,092: the honest sums
A state of our own doesn’t mean €21,092 million in our pocket. Counting Catalonia’s share of the army, the embassies and the interest on the debt, the Catalan government’s own data leave a margin of about €8,400 million in 2022, 3% of GDP (our arithmetic). Out of that would come the EU contribution, more defence and the transition, and getting back into the EU would not be automatic. Favourable studies put the gain at between 3% and 6% of GDP; critical ones, at less.
What it means: Nobody can promise you an exact figure, and whoever does is fooling you. What we would gain is the power to decide it ourselves.
Sources: Catalan government, 2026 budget, economic and financial report, annex 1 (PDF) · Advisory Council for the National Transition, report 18, 28-7-2014 (PDF, in Catalan) · Bosch and Espasa, Revista de Economía Aplicada 64, 2014 (in Spanish) · De la Fuente and Polo, IEE, 2014 (in Spanish)
If you’d like to change any of these figures, on 29 November you have a ballot paper: take the voting quiz and we’ll tell you who to vote for.