The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has highlighted before the Plenary Session of Congress the “optimism on the street” to point out the good progress of the economy and the creation “like never before of employment”. With these words, alluding to “the hotels and terraces full, and beaches up to the flag that have been recorded in Holy Week”, the Prime Minister has spoken of “country success” that contradicts the “apocalypse doomsayers”.
This phrase pronounced at the start of his speech before the Plenary Session of Congress already set the tone for an essentially electoral discourse fraught with triumphalism. “The economic data is smiling on Spain”, he assured, referring to the growth forecasts revised upwards by the IMF to 1.5%.
The President of the Government, to round off his intervention, has announced the creation of 43,000 more public homes that will be financed with the help of a line of credit from the ICO fed with 4,000 million European funds. This announcement has been disqualified by the PP spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra, who has labeled it as a “reheated dish” because that offer was already put on the table months ago by the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez.
Only inflation, in his opinion, overshadows the good data that Sánchez has offered but he has assured that in this field the Government is working “with all its might to cushion it” even when monetary policy, he has specified, is not in his hands but in those of the European Central Bank.
According to Sánchez, his expansionary spending strategy is also compatible with the reduction of the deficit and the debt. He believes that his policy is building a “fairer and more sustainable economy.”
The last piece to carry out this purpose has been the pension reform that has been enshrined, along with the labor reform, “with social peace.” A peace that has been achieved, he said, “with a lot of dialogue” and “dignifying people’s lives.” In this way, he has made an idyllic portrait of his management that he has compared to a dark photograph of the “neoliberal right” stage.
Then, he has brought up the debate around the drought and the irrigation of the Doñana Park. “The European Commission has set off all the alarms before the plans of the Junta de Andalucía promoted by the right and the extreme right,” he said before urging the Andalusian president Moreno Bonilla to withdraw his irrigation proposal and admit his mistake.
Sánchez has concluded this pre-electoral chapter by delving into his latest proposals on housing policy. After almost four years in La Moncloa and only five weeks before the elections, the president now insists that the housing problem is caused by having treated it as a commodity and not a right. He intends to “turn housing into the fifth pillar of the welfare state” leaving behind the policy that the PP deployed in this field “causing the real estate bubble that brought unemployment and corruption.”
It has been in this area that Sánchez has assured that he will increase the public housing stock from 230,000 to 280,000 “in a short space of time” that he has not specified.
The announcement that Moncloa anticipated came then: the Government is going to finance the promotion of another 43,000 homes for rent at affordable prices. They will be new or rehabilitated homes. For this, a line of 4,000 million from the ICO will be opened with money from European funds. In this way, the promise of public housing will rise to a total of 93,000.
The spokesperson for the PP, Cuca Gamarra, has replied to the speech by the President of the Government, assuming that the “country wants change”. The deputy has deepened the idea that the Executive “is in decomposition.” If Sánchez has chosen the issues that she considers to benefit her, the representative of the first opposition party has chosen just the opposite, those that cast shadows on government management.
Thus, Gamarra has referred to the destruction of the yes-is-yes law and inflation that is still rampant. He has also delved into the Housing Law proposed by the Government and which is based, he has assured, “on lies” and on the “radicalism and populism of ERC and Bildu”. Gamarra regretted that after four years in government, Sánchez now “has pulled Sareb’s promise of 50,000 homes out of his sleeve.” “A bluff and a lie”, he stated before adding that the 43,000 homes announced today by the Prime Minister were already anticipated by the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez. In short: “A reheated dish.”
The popular spokesperson has dedicated a good part of her speech to criticizing Sánchez’s foreign policy, mainly referring to relations with Morocco, indelibly marked by the ceding of the Sahara to the Alaouite regime decided by the president with the staunch opposition of Congress. Gamarra has reproached the president for not having a state policy because he keeps the first opposition party completely out of it.
The PP policy has finished its intervention by stating that the time of this Government “has ended”: “Goodbye Mr. Sánchez, goodbye”.
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