Know you that there is a General Directorate of policy of SME, attached to the Ministry of industry, tourism and trade? Did you know that if on its website they consult the grants and subsidies for SMEs will find 5.616 entries between grants, awards, aid, development programmes, measures momentum, lines of funding, endorsements and others, all with their corresponding budgetary allocation?

Does anyone know how much money goes in total to this type of aid, telling what bring the various ministries, autonomous communities, the county councils, municipalities and other public entities?

I do not know, or think that no one knows. But I can imagine that the total amount must be absolutely enormous. And I sense also that, as they are granted by different administrations and, naturally, uncoordinated, there the slightest rationality in their planning and delivery, and they are due to a common approach.

Has anyone assessed the real effects of this bloating expense? Are there any studies that provide data on its efficiency, on their cost-benefit ratio? Is it possible to calculate the enormous extra costs that must be the red tape linked to the management and control of such aid? Someone who knows what percentage of companies that benefit from them and how many have not never agreed to any?

I am afraid that not. But I feel that this is a colossal mess with purely propaganda purposes, a hotbed of practical patronage which benefits a few that are generally always the same.

And since the vast majority of companies have better things that deal with to go diving in the official documentation investigating if there is any assistance which could benefit, have been arising consultancies specializing in obtaining grants. Those who come and tell you: tell me what you do and I'll tell you what grants you touch. And always plays. You do what you do. And I say, do you have all this some sense?

I propose that subsidies should be removed. All. And that the total amount of the same over the savings generated by the disappearance of the costs of management is fully invested in measures to boost demand. Or to apply to lower social security contributions. O to improve infrastructure. Or even to address the large and growing public deficit. Anything will be better, more useful, more transparent that this maraña of end, small beer of which excluded the vast majority of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Or if not, which dealt among the companies to neckline. To both head. Same goes to ten thousand euros per employee, or to one hundred thousand, you go to know.