VIDEO: Generalitat Has 217 Senior Officials Earning Between €95,000 and €140,000

Did you know that with your taxes you pay for healthcare, education, roads... and also hundreds of astronomical salaries for high-ranking officials of the Generalitat?

To begin with, the Govern has 217 high-ranking officials who earn between 95,000 and 140,000 euros annually. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The highest salary among these 217 high-ranking officials is held by Salvador Illa, who earns 140,300 euros annually. For years, the president of the Generalitat has been the regional president with the highest salary in all of Spain, earning even more than the president of the Government. This happens now with Illa, but it also happened with Pere Aragonès, Carles Puigdemont, Quim Torra, Artur Mas...

Then come the Govern's councilors. Currently, there are 16, and each of them earns 124,400 euros annually. That is, the entire Executive of Salvador Illa, together, earns more than 2.1 million euros annually.

Beyond the members of the Govern, the Generalitat has another 190 high-ranking officials who earn between 95,000 and 99,000 euros. They are the general secretaries, general directors, secretaries, and directors of the various departments, territorial delegates, delegates in offices abroad... All these salaries together amount to more than 18 million euros annually.

Among these 190 high-ranking officials, we find, for example, Josep Lluís Trapero, general director of the Mossos who earns 99,000 euros annually. But we also have positions like the Director General of Social Dialogue, the Director General of Students, or the Delegate of the Govern in Senegal. Yes, we have a Delegate of the Govern in Senegal who earns more than 95,000 euros annually.

In this select group of 217 high-ranking officials with astronomical salaries, we also have the heads of the offices of the former presidents of the Generalitat. These are the offices of Pere Aragonès, Quim Torra, Carles Puigdemont, Artur Mas, and José Montilla. Well, the heads of each of these offices earn 117,000 euros.

This list is completed by other positions such as the Secretary General of the Presidency, the Secretary of the Govern, the director of the Generalitat's Legal Office, the Commissioner for the Comprehensive Transfer of Rodalies, the former convergent Pere Macías, or the Director of the Institute of Self-Government Studies, among others. All of them earn 124,000 euros.

Adding up all the salaries of these 217 high-ranking officials of the Generalitat, the figure reaches up to 21.5 million euros annually in salaries.

More High-Ranking Officials

In addition to these 217 high-ranking officials, the Generalitat has another 140 executives earning between 72,000 and 88,000 euros. Here we find assistants, advisors, deputies, office managers... An example is the head of the Pilot Plan Office for the Implementation of the Universal Basic Income. A Universal Basic Income that most of the Parliament rejected and that will never be carried out because it is economically unfeasible, but there we have a gentleman earning 86,000 euros annually to run this office.

In summary, between the 217 high-ranking officials who earn between 95,000 and 140,000 euros and the 140 who earn between 72,000 and 88,000 euros, the Generalitat allocates more than 30 million euros of public funds to pay the salaries of just over 350 people.

The Other Theft: Executives of Public Sector Entities

The positions mentioned above are only high-ranking officials who depend directly on the Generalitat. But then we have the executives of public entities. That is, people who do not work directly in the Generalitat but live thanks to a public salary. A salary that is not exactly modest, either.

Here we have the president of Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat, who earns as much as a Govern councilor: 124,000 euros. It is the same salary as, for example, the Artistic Director of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, the director of TV3, the director of Catalunya Ràdio, the president of the Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation (CCMA), the director of the Cartographic Institute of Catalunya...

In total, there are 200 high-ranking officials of public sector entities who earn between 85,000 and 124,000 euros. And, beyond those mentioned in the previous paragraph, we find managers of different health centers, the president of the La Marató de TV3 Foundation, the executive president of the European Institute of the Mediterranean, or the directors of the Catalan Waste Agency, the CAR of Sant Cugat, the Catalan Tourism Agency, Loteries de Catalunya, the Center for Opinion Studies... All their salaries cost us about 20 million euros annually.

In summary, we have about 550 people earning astronomical salaries from public coffers. They cost us more than 50 million euros annually. Here is where the main problem arises, which is not simply the salary. In fact, it is to a certain extent logical that a high-ranking official has a good salary.

The problem, basically, is threefold. The first is the reasonable doubt about whether we need this superstructure of more than 500 high-ranking officials. The second is the even more reasonable doubt about whether all these people are really qualified to perform such a job or if, in reality, they are party cronies who wouldn't even smell a similar salary if they were in the private sector. Here comes the third problem, which answers the second problem: as Catalonia is, it is evident that many of them are not up to their position. Because Catalonia's healthcare, education, infrastructure, security... are increasingly deteriorating, but what is not getting worse are their salaries. In recent years, we have had people earning these huge amounts of money for sinking Catalonia. This must end. Perhaps it is time to take the chainsaw.