Professor's presentation

A group of friends goes to the sports center in their town or city at night to train. Then they will go swimming.

Tomorrow they have to go to the municipal library after school to do a project, and if they have time left, they'll go to the park to play. On Sunday, after the basketball game at school, they want to visit a classmate who has just left the hospital after undergoing surgery for a knee injury.

As they walk through the streets, they pass by streetlights, garbage containers, traffic lights, banks, gardens, the fire station, and the police station.

Everything goes as planned, except for the visit to their friend who had surgery, which they can't make because there's no electricity on the street where he lives.

Some hooligans broke the streetlights and you can't see anything. Then, one of them thinks about the problem that a lack of street lighting would pose, or if there were no water in homes, no garbage collection service, no public hospitals, no schools, no libraries, no sports centers, no parks. Another says there are more public expenditures, beyond those listed by his friend, and points out those that are necessary for the maintenance of the Armed Forces, the Police, the Administration of Justice, or environmental care and the protection of nature. And another thinks that damaging gardens, streetlights, trash cans, and any public furniture is detrimental to everyone, something we'll all have to pay for.

The group discusses the issue and realizes, for the first time, that public goods and services are of interest to them as well. They also comment on the importance of education, since the better it is, the fewer uncivil acts there will be and, consequently, the lower the costs of repairing damage.

For the injured knee, it would have been a problem if there hadn't been a public hospital and qualified medical personnel available to him, and, moreover, free of charge. Her mother earns very little and her father is unemployed, but the operation didn't cost any money because public healthcare is free for all citizens in Spain. To ensure that this friend's operation has not cost him anything, all citizens (including him and his family) must contribute certain amounts of money, primarily through taxes, which constitute a large fund (public revenue) with which to pay the public expenses that we incur.

Therefore, it is important that we all pay the amounts (taxes) determined by law, because the better we fulfill our obligations as citizens, the better public services we will have and the better our way of life will be.

Taxes, therefore, are amounts of money that citizens are required by law to pay so that the State, the Autonomous Communities, and the Municipalities have sufficient resources to cover public expenses.

The State is organized territorially into municipalities, provinces, and Autonomous Communities.

According to the Constitution, all these entities enjoy autonomy in the management of their respective interests. And they all have their own budgets. Thus, it is the responsibility of the Government to prepare the General State Budget and of the Cortes Generales to examine and approve it. The governments of the Autonomous Communities are also responsible for preparing their respective budgets, and their Legislative Assemblies are responsible for approving them. The governing teams of the City Councils also draw up budgets, in this case local budgets, which must be approved by the majority of the municipal corporation in the corresponding plenary sessions.

The law approving the General State Budget is probably the most important law in a country. The Parliament, which in Spain is called the Cortes Generales, can modify its content and even return the bill to the Government when it is submitted for approval.

The annual budget debate addresses issues of great importance, such as tax changes; review of pensions and salaries of civil servants; approval of planned major investment projects: roads, highways, railways, airports; or authorization of borrowing operations, which the Government needs to carry out to cover those expenses that cannot be met with current tax revenues.

Therefore, the General State Budget, which is annual, includes all expenses and income of the state public sector. The Government must submit them to the Congress of Deputies at least three months before the end of the previous year's budget. If they cannot be approved before the start of the next fiscal year, they will be automatically extended.