Pedro Sánchez arrived at the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, surrounded by the island’s candidates for the Presidency of the Government, Ángel Víctor Torres, the Island Council, Augusto Hidalgo, and the Mayor of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Carolina Darias, amid applause and the apotheosis hymn of the PSOE. The room chosen for his pre-campaign meeting was overflowing, around a thousand people. The party in the Canary Islands wanted to visualize the affinity of the President of the Government with the Islands. “Pedro Sánchez is the president who has come to the Canary Islands the most times when he has been needed!”exclaimed Ángel Víctor Torres with enthusiasm during his speech, in which he recognized that it is necessary to improve the health of the Archipelago, and announced that his electoral program contemplates a law to avoid delays and waiting lists.
“They speak of a luxury good and we of a basic necessity”, he remarked in reference to the PP, and promised to put “all the instruments” within the reach of the municipalities to strengthen housing policies. The president encouraged the Canary Islands candidates to do everything in their power to put more homes on the market, especially for young people, and stressed that the Spanish Executive will be pushing with all the necessary instruments, such as Sareb or freeing up land from the Ministry of Defense to create 20,000 subsidized homes in the country. According to Sánchez, his Government has multiplied “by eight” the budgetary amounts dedicated to living placealthough he reiterated that it is necessary to build more protected houses to contain the rise in prices. “There are two paths to choose with the vote: go back ten years and return to the crises and neoliberal responses of cuts and precariousness or ten years of progress, dignity and rights that the PSOE represents,” he remarked.
The president launched a question to the audience, which he immediately answered himself. “Why is there more social peace in Spain than in the rest of the European countries or in comparison with other moments of crisis?”. And he replied that it is due to the preponderance of social dialogue. Sánchez recalled that the World Health Organization has just concluded the health emergency and explained that one of the great lessons of the pandemic is the need to strengthen the National Health System. “We can never again weaken the health of our country, on the contrary, we must strengthen it because it is what saves us when they are badly given”emphasized the president, who also called for protecting science in Spain and avoiding “another exodus” of talent like that of the previous economic crisis.
The President of the Government of Spain is fed up with the opposition parties insulting him. And he reiterated it throughout his speech, which focused practically on the problems that Spain suffers from housing. “It is not acceptable or assumable that Spanish youth emancipate themselves at 30 and not at 20, as in other places in Europe,” stressed Pedro Sánchez, while regretting that when he reached the Executive there would only be “3% of public housing”. “When the right talks about housing, it talks about land and hits to speculate instead of conceiving it as a right”snapped Sánchez, who asserted that despite the wishes of the right “the apocalypse is not going to come.”
The Government of Spain and the Canary Islands have homework to do. Among them, the also general secretary of the PSOE marked for the next five years to implement “the fifth pillar of the welfare state”, which in his opinion are housing policies. “In five years we are going to increase the number of subsidized homes by 50%,” he assured.
The president avoided talking about compromising issues such as his support for Morocco’s autonomy plan, but he did greet “the Africans” who attended the rally, who applauded it. He also claimed the role of the European Union and community funds, which serve to reindustrialize Spain, modernize the productive fabric and make it more sustainable. “When the train of progress starts up, this party is unstoppable,” said the president.
The meeting with militants yesterday afternoon took place after Sánchez’s announcement in the morning in Murcia in which he promised to discount 50% so that young people between 18 and 30 years old can do the European interrail and the creation of a Spanish circuit of these characteristics with a 90% reduction in the price of the state-concessed train and bus and 50% in the AVE.
election victory
The president pointed out the socialist management in recent years as the best endorsement of the PSOE. “The Canary Islands are going to be the vanguard of the electoral victory that we are going to have in all of Spain. We are going to be the first political force in this country again,” he proclaimed to applause. He recalled that the levels of inequality are lower now than they were before the pandemic, “and if we add to that a volcano and Russia’s war in Ukraine” what will we not be able to do when the wind blows in our favor? , he asserted, looking especially at Torres. “That we have gone back to 2008 in terms of inequality is an extraordinary success for the country. Not from the government, from the country. Of its people, its companies, its workers and its public institutions. Whoever rules governs,” he stressed.
The PSOE general secretary insisted on several occasions during his speech that the right-wing parties “insult” and “disqualify” the socialists and the Government of Spain, which in his opinion is produced by “bringing down” all the dogmas neoliberals with progressive and social democratic policies. “I understand that they are angry. Every employment data we have is a displeasure for the right. We are showing that things can be done differently and that through social democratic and socialist politics we are bringing down all neoliberal dogmas,” he remarked. The president stressed that “since they cannot talk about employment, the minimum vital income or the pension reform, they only dedicate themselves to insulting and disqualifying.”
During the event, which lasted an hour, both Pedro Sánchez, as well as Ángel Víctor Torres, Augusto Hidalgo and Carolina Darias placed special emphasis on demonstrating the closeness that unites them. “Dear Pedro” or “dear Ángel, Carolina and Augusto” were words that were thrown around repeatedly. The president of the Canary Islands and PSOE candidate for re-election took advantage of his speech to launch that his electoral program contains a law to eradicate the delay and waiting lists in Health that he will implement if he governs again. In the Canary Islands, the number of people waiting to be operated on in public health grew by 12.53% last year, to stand at 34,556 as of December 31 (3,854 more), with an average wait of five months and six days, twelve days more than in 2021, according to data from the Canary Islands Health Service. Torres insisted on the need to “continue improving health” and get closer to the average wait for the rest of the autonomous communities.
The president of the Canary Islands assured that education must also be improved and promised to hire more teachers to lower the ratios in the classrooms “even though we are below the average,” he specified. However, Ángel Víctor Torres explained that in Education there is an 11% dropout rate and when they came to government four years ago it was 19%. For the Canarian socialists, Advances in education from 0 to 3 years of age, which is “public and free on all the Islands, is “unavoidable”. He also recognized that social rights must be improved and a “definitive” socio-sanitary infrastructure plan that has not existed until now.
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For his part, the PSOE candidate for the Island Council, Augusto Hidalgo, called for continuing the socialist legacy of recent years and considered that the Spanish and Canary Islands right “has gone wild” and has become “more radical.” He valued the advances represented by the increases in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage, the implementation of the Minimum Vital Income or the increase in pensions based on the rise in the CPI.
The socialist candidate for mayor of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and former Minister of Health assured that socialism represents “transformation and improvements” in people’s lives in the city. Regarding her city project, Carolina Darias stressed that the municipality must improve its services to citizens and promised that in each district there would be a police station or sufficient parking lots. Likewise, she explained that one of her objectives is to have a “healthier” city with safe environments that promote “physical, emotional and social well-being.”