When center-right Catalan nationalists replaced the Socialist government in that region, incoming officials discovered the local budget deficit was twice the amount than had been previously reported.
These so-called hidden debt concerns may be more widespread than is currently known. “[The election winners are] going to arrive and realize there’s no money,” said Ismael Crespo, political scientist at the Ortega-Maranon Foundation in Madrid. “Many of the regions have problems not only to meet the deficit target but to meet basic services, which until now have been hidden because of the elections,” he added. One of those regions is Castilla-La Mancha, a region where the PP and local business leaders claim invoices of $1.43 billion remain unpaid, and where Maria Dolores de Cospedal, the conservative party’s newly elected-regional president, has pledged to “audit” the region, which she characterized as “practically bankrupt.”
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