The vice president for economic affairs, Nadia Calviño, has rejected that the electoral advance announced on Monday generates “vertigo” as it coincides with Spain’s current presidency of the European Union. “Thinking of the last five years, an election is the least dizzying thing to give society,” explained the vice president during the discussion she had with the president of the Cercle d’Economia, Jaume Guardiola, at the closing of the XXXVIII annual meeting of the institution.
Calviño has insisted – in a pre-electoral campaign tone – that “with the PSOE, which has led economic policy, there is no uncertainty. It is known and with positive results.” In the presentation of the vice president, Guardiola had a harsh tone in relation to the progress of the elections: “You know that in the Cercle we are people of order and you will understand why this unexpected call for elections causes us a certain vertigo. And that does not not only because it leads us to two more months of electoral contention, just after the municipal elections, but also because it is difficult for us to understand how this will affect our presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of the year”.
Although Calviño tried to calm the members down in his speech, it does not seem that the explanations were convincing based on the subsequent questions. Just as President Pere Aragonès did the day before, the Vice President overwhelmed with macroeconomic figures to ensure that the Spanish economy improves. “Since the financial crisis we have had a lost decade, we have gone backwards,” she said. And she has added that “we are only now beginning to recover that lost decade” and she has cited indicators such as the risk of poverty, GDP, employment that “return us to that point prior to the crisis” of 2008.
