The controversial promise of the Minister of Social Rights, Carles Campuzano, and the ERC candidate for Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Gabriel Rufián, to build the second residence for the elderly in the city will reach Parliament in various ways. To the appearance in commission of the Campuzano, the PSC intends to attach the demand to the Government that it authorize an addendum to this year’s budgets with the aim of ensuring the construction of the center, a demand that the mayoress of the city has advanced , Núria Parlón, this morning.
Parlón, who met with Campuzano last week as a result of the controversial announcement with the Republican candidate, has indicated that the socialist parliamentary group will raise this demand to the Government to enable an appendix in the recently approved accounts, through the budget provided by the Department of the Presidency directed by Laura Vilagrà, to build the residence that the city council has been demanding for years. In fact, it will be the deputy spokesman for the PSC, Raúl Moreno, who will put this proposal on the table in the plenary session of Parliament this Tuesday.
With this initiative, the Socialists want to take advantage of the controversy aroused to wrest from the Catalan Executive the definitive commitment for the construction of the center, thus evidencing that if its construction is not carried out it will be the exclusive responsibility of the ERC Government. In fact, Parlón has admitted that “the controversy transcends the framework of Santa Coloma and has settled in Parliament”, something that his party intends to take advantage of to demand its construction.
The mayoress of the city, who has branded the discussion as “electoralist”, explained that Minister Campuzano acknowledged to her in their meeting that “there has been no planning” by the Generalitat in the field of geriatric residences and that he had no availability to undertake such planning until the budget agreement with the PSC and En Comú Podem was forged. In fact, the PSC tried to introduce the construction of this center in the budget negotiations with the Government, to which the Catalan Executive refused, according to the Socialists, and only promised to launch a planning of centers and, in all case, incorporate that of Santa Coloma for the year 2024.
But Salvador Illa’s party wants to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the controversy to take the cat into the water. Parlón calculates that the building would cost between 5 and 6 million euros, a “relatively affordable” amount for the Government. For its construction, the city council has had the land available “for a long time”, he has assured, so it would be up to the Generalitat to build it and arrange the squares, through the management formula “that it deems appropriate”.
