The Barcelona Institute of Economics (IEB) has just published the third of its four annual IEB Reports. Coordinated by Núria Bosch and Maite Vilalta, directors of the IEB’s Fiscal Federalism Observatory. The IEB Report 3/2025 addresses the issue of the local financing system in Spain.
The local financing system in Spain makes few distinctions between municipalities according to population size. However, the financial challenges faced by small municipalities in rural areas differ significantly from those of large cities or municipalities located in metropolitan areas. The aim of this new IEB Report is to propose the most suitable financing system for rural municipalities, large cities, and metropolitan areas.
The three contributions included in IEB Report 3/2025 offer a complementary overview of the challenges of local financing, ranging from the realities of small municipalities to large metropolitan areas, and provide a joint reflection on the need for a fairer, more flexible system adapted to territorial diversity. Its authors are Cristina de Gispert, professor at the University of Barcelona and researcher at the IEB; Luiz de Mello, Director of Country Studies at the OECD Economics Department; and Paula Salinas, professor of economics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and director of KSNET (the Knowledge Sharing Network).