The economy is once again the protagonist of the political battle seasoned with the prognoses, favorable to the right, in the next Andalusian elections. The opposition delves into the unrest in the street, the runaway prices, the negative reports from the Bank of Spain and the suspicions of the European Commission to try to put the Government on the ropes. PP, Vox and Ciudadanos ask the Executive for a policy that they describe as disastrous and that will not serve to achieve a true recovery for another year and a half, until the end of 2023.
Today, in the control session, without the presence of Pedro Sánchez, who is in Davos trying to promote Spain to large international investors, the first vice-president, Nadia Calviño, has defended herself against the coincident economic reproaches of PP and Vox, accusing to the first of being a “destructive” opposition and, to the second, of being a party that “proposes distributing weapons among citizens” just on the day that the world is shaken by the massacre of children in a school in Texas .
Both parties have put their finger on the sore spot of the continuously lowered economic growth forecasts, in the forecast that Spain will be the last to recover from the crisis of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, in the affirmation that “we are the worst in Europe” and in the policy of an Executive that revolves around “lies, arrogance and propaganda”. The first vice president has denied this “negative” drawing of the Spanish economy and has emphasized that “citizens and companies” are the “center” of all the Government’s strategies. “The Spaniards know it”, she has riveted before affirming that “the worst” that the country has “is the opposition” installed “in the ‘no’ corner”.
Against Vox, Calviño has been even tougher. Iván Espinosa de los Monteros has stressed the same arguments as the PP and has described the latest Bank of Spain report as “devastating”, also accusing the vice president of dedicating herself to “attacking” all the institutions that do not believe in the government forecasts. The response of the number two of the Executive has influenced the “social shield” approved to defend and protect citizens and has emphasized that the Government’s economic policy has the “trust of international institutions and investors.”
In Calviño’s opinion, Vox’s claim is none other than to “generate tension and negative energy.” It has been in line with this statement that the vice president has reproached Santiago Abascal’s party for wanting to “distribute weapons among citizens.”
The Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, has also faced economic criticism from an opposition focused on attacking a fiscal policy focused on raising taxes just when consumption contracts and on regional financing that privileges some over others. others and forgets “equality and solidarity” between Spaniards, as the deputy of Cs Guillermo Díaz has pointed out.
Montero has accused the PP of making “always derogatory comments” about Andalusia, at the same time that he has asked Ciudadanos to “put their shoulders together” in the Autonomous Community, ahead of the June 19 elections. In this way the electoral debate has been strained in Congress. A battle in which the Minister of Finance has made the orange formation ugly by agreeing with the PP “in all the Autonomous Communities where they have the opportunity to give the government to the right” and remembering only regional financing when an “electoral contest is approaching “.
The moment of greatest tension in the plenary, however, has come with the intervention of the Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, in response to a question from the popular caucus on inequality. The leader of Podemos has considered that the “central issue” of inequality in our country is that “the Treasury fraudsters, also those who participate in regattas in Galicia, have to pay what corresponds to them in Spain”.
A few words with which Belarra has vindicated the fiscal reform proposed by United We Can and that has served to set fire to the parliamentary sector of the PP, which has rebuked the minister for addressing Juan Carlos I as a criminal from his position as representative of the Executive. The president of the Congress, Meritxell Batet, has repeatedly asked the popular deputies to remain silent before resuming the session.
Minutes before, the reaction from both the Government and the presidency of the Chamber has been different in response to the question from the ERC deputy Carolina Telechea, who has addressed Félix Bolaños to find out if “the Government intends to end the privileges of the royal family.
The Minister of the Presidency has asked to distinguish between “the institution and the personal behavior” of the Emeritus, and has stressed that both the Government and the Royal House work “hand in hand” in order to “reinforce transparency, accountability and the exemplary nature of our Head of State”. An answer that has not convinced the Republicans, who have branded Felipe VI’s father “abusive, embezzler, liar and corrupt.” Immediately, Batet warned Telechea that, out of respect for State institutions, these words would be removed from the Journal of Sessions.
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