Alfonso Fernández Mañueco is currently the only president of a community where the PP governs with Vox who has come to campaign in Catalonia. He came yesterday to do it, together with Alejandro Fernández, with a very specific objective: to contrast the educational model of Castile and Leon, which obtained the best results in the PISA report in Spain, with the Catalan system, with poor scores in these international tests.
The Castilian-Leonese president put the focus of the “blame” of the Catalan results on the process and on the pro-independence governments with the premise, in broad strokes, of “fewer embassies and more money for education”. In the words of the Catalan candidate, less ideology in the classroom and more effort.
Both the popular candidate and Mañueco pointed out that it is possible to combine management with less tax burden and more investment in education. In comparative terms, according to their analysis, investment in education relative to GDP is higher in Castile and Leon than in Catalonia. The results of the 2022 PISA report, which were presented in December, generated a heated debate in the educational community and in Parliament. Catalonia was the second autonomous region that lost the most points in mathematics, only behind Melilla. Lower scores in the other two assessed skills: reading comprehension and science. And, in general terms, it was below the Spanish average and the OECD countries.
For this reason, Alejandro Fernández took the opportunity to present the program of the PP in matters of education with Mañueco and to denounce, first of all, that the “worsening” is due to the fact that the “national construction project of the separatists prevails over the student”. In Castile and León, according to the candidate’s account, “there is no ideological manipulation that contaminates the school debate”.
The popular ones outlined the main programmatic axes, starting with “the recovery of the teacher’s authority”. Also, Alejandro Fernández explained that he advocates the freedom of choice of the parents of the educational model and is committed to trilingual education. He also defended the “culture of effort” and referred to the “school reinforcement” model that was launched in Castile and Leon with good results.
Mañueco and the Catalan PP candidate then went to the Castellà Lleonès center in Barcelona. The president of the community had previously thanked the Catalans for the welcome they have offered to everyone who came to Catalonia in search of a life project. A thank you to the Catalans, but not, he stressed, to the political leaders who pushed the process to the point of “causing a social division”.
With a week consumed by the electoral campaign, the politics of alliances after 12-M, faced with the predictably difficult construction of majorities, continued at the center of the debate. Alejandro Fernández thus came out in step with the considerations of Salvador Illa, who in the Ser chain opted for a transversal government without excluding Junts. “The PSCha candidate revealed that he intends to reach an agreement with Puigdemont, he said, which means that he has not only resurrected the process, but also the will to continue it.”
The PP steps on the accelerator towards the final stretch of the campaign. Alberto Núñez Feijó will spend the next three days in Catalonia, he will repeat next week, in which the Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno, and the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, will also participate. Among the various events, it will be with Alejandro Fernández in Plaça Artós in Barcelona, ??with an eye on the electoral border with Vox.
