Next June 9th we have an electoral appointment with the European Parliament, a place with diffuse powers but which, in one way or another, plays a more important role each time in the configuration of the vital framework in which we Valencians must move .
We are a European People from our origins, and Europe has always been the recipient of our products and, also, of our people; the space where we have mostly migrated for political, work, educational reasons, or simply for convenience. The Mediterranean Corridor is not an entelechy, but the need to give physical expression to an immense river of life, knowledge and wealth that has always linked us with the peoples beyond the Pyrenees. To say that Valencia is much closer (sentimentally as well) to Montpellier than to A Coruña or Cádiz is no truism, but the realization that we live in a State that has voluntarily been built as a circular prison where all the apparently peripheral we are condemned to depend on a single center extracting resources.
What will be the future path of the Valencian People, and to what extent will it be self-centered again, are at present complex questions that are difficult to answer, but there is no doubt that the strengthening of our direct presence in Europe, without intermediaries, is a condition inescapable preliminary to pave the way towards our collective rectification.
What are the most urgent problems that Valencians must solve in the European space?:
1. The European construction has never been done from a truly federal and altruistic conception, but pressured by the interests of its most powerful members, who have found in the European Union a magnificent sounding board to amplify the gains derived from their own relations with third countries. The case of France and the Netherlands with respect to their former colonies, or that of the United Kingdom before Brexit, clearly illustrate why the strategic and necessarily protectable value of Valencian agriculture has not been considered in relation to products that compete unfairly due to the poor labor and phytosanitary conditions in which they occurred.
2. The Spanish State has never defended, or even known, the enormous qualitative wealth of the territory over which it exercises its jurisdiction. Basques, Galicians and Asturians have been able to place an “Atlantic agenda” among the concerns of Spanish foreign policy, which the Valencians have not done. From Madrid, the PV is seen as a giant beach bar that opens in the summer and closes on October 1, but not as a socio-economic entity with its own entity that should be understood and protected. The political lack of protection in which Castelló’s powerful ceramic sector has found itself in the face of the gas crisis caused by the war in Ukraine is a clear example of this. Another example highlighted among many: the unacceptable systematic delays of the Ministry of Health in the processing in Europe of the compensation due for the Valencian health care to EU citizens, who are already an inseparable part of the “Marca España”.
3. Mass tourism has caused the transformation of our places into a simple commodity that preys on the territory, causing a growing monoculture incompatible with the necessary diversification of any developed economy. In addition, it is necessary to make the EU reflect on the evidence that the life model of its “North” is supported, more and more, by the full disposal of the space of the “South” as a place for holidays, second residence or, increasingly, telecommuting and reception of “expatriates” who can develop their activity while choosing the environment. PV has become an “oxygen cylinder” of 23,000 square kilometers that provides well-being and relieves stress for millions and millions of Europeans. If we are going to be an inseparable part of their lives and become their constant place of rest, then we must demand that the Valencian voice is heard louder and clearer in Europe when it comes to defining social, environmental and technological policies.
All these reasons urge the formation of a broad-spectrum Valencian candidacy that, based on clearly democratic values, defends us as a People and helps to consolidate a permanent presence in European institutions that is always looking after our common interests .
From Via Mediterrània we have decided to appeal to all the formations that feel alluded to by these principles to, from now on, work to make this candidacy possible, without personalisms or short-term plays absent from future projection. It’s what a lot of people are waiting for.
