Owing more than 1,574,682 million euros and having a public debt that represents 107.7% of GDP in one year constitutes a cause for celebration for the Government of progress.
As soon as the Bank of Spain announced the public debt data for 2023, the communication teams of Moncloa and the economic ministries came out in an orderly manner to boast about the data. For example, the Minister of Finance, the doctor Maria Jesus Monteroassured that the socialists demonstrate that “Social justice is compatible with deficit and debt reduction.”
The media, even those that appear to be critical of the Government, have limited themselves to reproducing the press release from the Bank of Spain. Thus, they give the percentage of GDP of public debt, which stands at 107.7% of GDP. But they do not mention the amount of that debt.
The truth is that Spanish governments have not stopped putting citizens into debt for more than a decade. The year 2008 (socialist government of Rodríguez Zapatero) ended with a public debt of 365,203 million euros. From then on, debt issuance began to grow without brakes.
| SPANISH PUBLIC DEBT (in billions of euros) | |||||||
| YEAR | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
| AMOUNT | 1,144 | 1,107 | 1,188 | 1,345 | 1,427 | 1,502 | 1,574 |
In 2009, the figure exceeded 500,000 million euros. The change of Government did not alter the pace, but rather increased it. With Mariano Rajoy (PP) in La Moncloa, the public debt exceeded one billion euros in 2014, although the communication team at that time tried to downplay its importance by saying that as a percentage it was below 100% of the annual GDP. There was still room.
The government of Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) It has the merit of having increased public debt by 50% in less than a decade. The 2014 fiscal year ended with a Public Administration debt of 1,049 billion euros and 2023 ended with a debt of 1,574 billion.
Between 2022 and 2023, The State increased its debt by 72,177 million euros; that is, 8.2 million more per hour. The left-wing Government boasts of having reduced the percentage of debt over GDP from 113% in 2022 to only 107.7%, when the percentage difference is due to inflation, which in 2023 was 3.1%, the which reduces the nominal of the debts.
Not only does public debt increase, but also tax collection. The Treasury estimates that in 2023 it will be close to 265,000 million euros, when in 2022 it was 255,463 million and in 2021 it was 223,385 million. In 2018, when Sánchez won the motion of censure against Rajoy, the collection amounted to 208,685 million.
That is, tax collection during the Sánchez years has grown by just over 25% when the debt has grown by over 40%.
And why does the Spanish State need so much money? Not only to pay the interest on the public debt, which in 2023 was 31,275 million euros, according to the General State Budgets, but also in salaries of officials and other public employees, whose number does not stop growing either. A few weeks ago the Ministry of Public Function declared that it had discovered 220,000 public employees not previously accounted for by the Government itself, but who received salaries.
However, The largest public expenditure is that corresponding to pensions, which for now represent 11.7% of the national GDP. In 2023, this item exceeded 170,000 million euros. Only pensions and public debt service swallow 75% of tax revenue.
To pay for everything else, such as redundant ministries, public television, pensions for former presidents of regional governments, aid to the Third World, observatories of all kinds, subsidies for cinema, etc., the partitocracy has to resort to more and more broadcasts of letters and Treasury bond.