In October 2021, while the coronavirus pandemic was still ravaging Spain, Pedro Sánchez reactivated the mental health strategy that José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero launched in 2006 and updated in 2009. After the parenthesis of Mariano Rajoy’s mandates – who “did nothing”, he lamented yesterday – the president of the central government launched his own action plan with 100 million euros. And in 2022, the Spanish Government transferred another 24 million from the mental health plan to the autonomous communities.
At the rally he led yesterday in Valladolid, Sánchez kept the focus on public health – the day before, in Valencia, he already announced an injection of 580 million for primary care – and advanced that the Council of Ministers also will approve another investment of 38.5 million for mental health care tomorrow.
“We must make mental health visible, we must talk about it, it is important that we put financial resources into it and, above all, not stigmatize it. We can suffer from depression and have psychological problems at some point in our lives, but we can move forward and life is worth living”, he argued.
The new item of 38.5 million that will be approved by the Central Government tomorrow will be transferred to the autonomous communities. And, of this amount, 14.5 million will be used to improve the equipment in the health centers.
Yesterday in Valladolid – where he accompanied the mayor and socialist candidate for re-election, Óscar Puente -, Sánchez insisted on confronting the commitment to public health with the management of Isabel DÃaz Ayuso in Madrid. “Of the four autonomous communities that allocate the least health expenditure per inhabitant, three are governed by the PP and none by the PSOE. You can imagine which one is the first: Madrid”, he pointed out.
“The great paradox is that it is the autonomous community with the highest level of income per capita, due to the capital effect it has, not for anything else, and it is the one with the worst level of health expenditure per inhabitant”, he regret The consequence, he added, is that 40% of Madrid residents have private health insurance.
Sánchez, in any case, justified his campaign announcements, which the PP describes as electoralist. “The right is walking very upset, they call me a man with multiple advertisements. But we don’t advertise, we publish in the BOE, which is something quite different”, he emphasized. And he defended the initiatives to “protect the people and advance our country”. “The drama is not that this Government promotes measures that protect people, but that we have an opposition that has nothing to offer”, he replied. And he accused the PP of promoting “a hate campaign”.
Sánchez’s rally in Valladolid gathered 1,500 supporters, while Alberto Núñez Feijóo burst into action in Valencia’s bullring. But the PSOE remember that Pablo Casado also filled this bullring, in October 2021, when Sánchez launched the mental health plan. The difference is that today the president continues to promote this initiative, while the PP defenestered Casado a few months after overflowing the bullring. An omen for Feijóo?
