The catchy song from the Verano azul series yesterday enlivened the wait of those attending the event that the PP held at Casa Seat to publicize the main lines of the economic program that Alberto Núñez Feijóo will deploy if he arrives in Moncloa , with legal certainty, stability and responsible government as emblems and a tax cut for incomes below 40,000 euros as a star measure.
But this score, in which also resonates the promise to reach the 22 million members of Social Security in the next legislature, still has no conductor.
Despite the expectation raised, the head of the opposition continued to keep to himself for one more day the name of who will be his Minister of Economy if he becomes president of the Spanish Government, so vice president Nadia Calviño can exhibit his balance sheet without an antagonist with whom to debate, as he wishes, in the public arena.
In the absence of this concreteness, no less, Feijóo did reveal in a lengthy speech in front of prominent representatives of the Catalan business world some of the initiatives with which he wants to turn Spain into one of the three fastest growing economies in the entire European Union , which are summarized in the creation of employment and the attraction of investment after a period of five years characterized, in his opinion, by stagnation.
“Spain cannot afford four more years of economic populism”, said the leader of the PP, for whom the coalition government of PSOE and Unides Podemos has “impoverished Spanish families like never before”, which is why, among the first measures he will take if he governs, he mentioned the lowering of personal income tax for the middle classes and the attraction of foreign talent, as well as the brake on the national brain drain, to create quality jobs.
The PP’s recipe is based on growth, and despite the fact that Spain has finally recovered pre-pandemic levels in this indicator, for Feijóo there is no reason for enthusiasm when the country tops the unemployment rankings, with special incidence among young people and those over 50 years old, and drags one of the heaviest public debts of the states of the European Union: “There are intense clouds on the horizon”, he warned.
After referring to an imprecise boost to research and development so that Spain becomes a “preferred destination” for companies betting on artificial intelligence, the conservative candidate did not forget about the traditional sectors of economic development and, in front of an auditorium in which there was Jaume Guardiola, president of the Cercle d’Economia; Antoni Cañete, president of the employer Pimec, or Joaquín Gay de Montellà, ex-president of Foment del Treball and one of the speakers, highlighted the importance of the automotive sector – “I also had a Seat Ibiza”, he recalled – and tourism . “El Prat airport must become one of the most important in the world”, offered the leader of the PP, who also announced a renova’t plan to modernize the hospitality industry.
But if Feijóo was critical of the central government, with a structure of 22 ministries and hundreds of advisers and high-ranking officials that he proposes to lighten up, he was no less critical of his parliamentary partners, particularly the pro-independence ones, with a ” obsession with deploying the identity narrative” that has “distracted” Catalan society from its historical desire for well-being and progress and was responsible for the “wrecking” of the process.
“We already know how this movie ends”, said the aspirant for the presidency, who defended the unity of all Spaniards as a shared path towards a “better life” and asked to turn over some claims which led 8,000 companies, according to the figures he presented, to leave Catalonia.
Claiming to be heir to the “reformism” that enabled entry into the euro under the presidency of José María Aznar, Feijóo is now asking to face the challenges of the climate emergency with “guarantees of an orderly and fair energy transition “. But despite recognizing that Spain is a powerhouse in clean energy and can solve the water shortage thanks to the latter, he refused to give up nuclear power altogether.
