Conference on depopulation in Teruel. With this framework, the PP wants to establish itself as a standard-bearer in the defense of the rural environment, so that people do not have to leave their places of origin to be able to live and work. A matter, to which Alberto Núñez Feijóo attaches great importance, so much so that yesterday, he did not have a single word not even for the law of only yes is yes; nor for the economic situation, which in his opinion has nothing to do with what Pedro Sánchez describes, nor for the internal struggles within the Government. The president of the PP yesterday spoke only of “el rural”, as he likes to call it.
A place to which he belongs, not in vain, he explained in Teruel, Os Peares (Ourense), is “a town so small that it doesn’t even have a mayor.”
The first thing that Feijóo did was claim his origin and come to the conclusion that “it is good that there is someone from the rural area in La Moncloa, because only then will commitments for the rural area come out of the Government.” By focusing on rural areas, the PP tries to prevent it from happening like in the general elections, in which the provincial parties of what was called “Empty Spain” scratched votes for the two big parties.
The president of the PP now comes forward and recalls that he, being president of the Xunta de Galicia, brought together, in 2021, seven regional presidents, those of Aragon, Castilla-La Mancha, Asturias, La Rioja, the four of the PSOE, Cantabria, from the Regionalist Party of Cantabria and Castilla y León and Galicia, to give a common response to the problems of depopulation, because it is “a matter of state”.
A problem that he described in figures. Only 21% of the Spanish population lives in 52% of the Spanish territory, which is what these seven autonomous communities add up to; 85% of Spanish municipalities have less than 5,000 inhabitants; and 90% of the population lives in only 9.3% of the municipalities. And it is not only a question of depopulation, but also of aging. In Spain, 7% of the population is over 65 years of age, but there are autonomous communities where this figure represents 25% of its inhabitants.
With these figures, Feijóo is clear that the only way to retain the population is through tax incentives for them to stay or to settle in the rural world. He thus defends that in rural areas the taxes for the purchase or transfer of land be zero; that there be an aid plan for the rehabilitation of homes in the town centers, and that the industries leave the cities and settle in rural areas, not in the towns, but nearby, on land close to roads or highways, that facilitate the transport of goods.
Only in this way, maintains Feijóo, “with specific taxation for the entire rural world of Spain”, will it be possible to fight against depopulation. A kind of “positive discrimination from the fiscal point of view”, which also includes bonuses for labor costs in provinces such as Soria, Cuenca or Teruel, “going up to the maximum allowed by the European Union”.
In addition to these tax benefits, the president of the PP underlines other basic needs, such as Internet broadband reaching all towns, because there are businesses, such as rural houses, which sometimes cannot operate because by not reaching Internet cannot be charged by card. But above all, he said, to consolidate the population, it is necessary to start by guaranteeing access to education and health in these territories, because if not, nothing else that is done will be effective. “Without health and without education there is no rural,” Feijóo stressed.
