PP leaders swear against the cancellation of regional debt
All in one. The regional presidents of the PP are ready to turn tomorrow's meeting of the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy (CPFF) into their own Fuenteovejuna, with the role of evil commander reserved for the first vice president of the Government and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero.
This was seen coming since the Conference of Presidents of Santander, held in January, and it was confirmed by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in his appearance at the headquarters on Calle Génova yesterday, where he promised that all his barons – eleven presidents and one vice president of the autonomous communities and the representatives of the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, a very large majority of those who will sit on the CPFF – would reject en bloc the partial debt forgiveness negotiated by Moncloa and ERC, which will thus collect on their support for the investiture of the socialist Salvador Illa in Catalonia: “They are going to vote no to inequality, to rewarding poor management, to privileges and to the purchase of the presidency of the Government with cash payment of the money of all Spaniards to the independentists,” exclaimed Feijóo.
Ayuso, without debt to the FLA, leads the popular revolt against the “privileges” of CataloniaThe Treasury's offer to extend the tax relief to all the communities, with Andalusia, the most populated, as the main beneficiary, was of no use, since the PP prefers to put principles before the economy even in those cases, such as the Valencian Community, where the situation, due to the necessary reconstruction after the devastating floods in October, is more desperate.
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But if even Juanma Moreno and Carlos Mazón, the leaders of these two regions that have suffered long years of underfunding due to a system that has not been renewed since 2009, as is also the case in Murcia, oppose this "new offense" - as its president, Fernando López Miras, described it - because they equate it with "preferential treatment" for Catalonia agreed "under the table", the one who has raised her voice the most in her endless struggle with Pedro Sánchez's Government is Madrid's Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
The president of the Community of Madrid, whose government did not resort to the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA) created by the PP minister Cristóbal Montoro at the height of the crisis resulting from the bursting of the real estate bubble and therefore does not have that type of debt with the State, yesterday attacked the Moncloa's claims with renewed harshness.
During a visit to Mérida, where she met with the president of Extremadura, María Guardiola, to give her support in the battle she is waging against the closure of the Almaraz nuclear power plant, the leader of Madrid was adamant about the debt forgiveness, as if it only benefited Catalonia: “You cannot be more brazen. You force the rest of the Spanish people to take on this unacceptable burden at gunpoint,” she exclaimed with hyperbolic rhetoric at the press conference held after signing a collaboration protocol with the Extremadura regional government.
As for other regional presidents of her party, including Aragonese Jorge Azcón, who opposes his fellow citizens “paying the debt of the Catalans”, for Ayuso the Treasury's proposal “cannot be more arbitrary”, since she considers it completely “unacceptable” that “those who, with the independence movement and erratic policies, have expelled companies and impoverished the middle class of Catalonia, have decided that the debts are going to be forgiven”.
“We are at the service of the whole of Spain,” said the Madrid president, who advocates for ever-lower taxation, which President Illa calls “fiscal dumping,” and once again attacked Sánchez for “making a pact with those who are sinking Catalonia to forgive their debts and distribute them among others, as if they could evaporate and as if they belonged only to a few of us.”
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