The President of the Government, Pedro Sancheztransformed his conference at the beginning of the political course into a series of attacks against the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso. Demonstrating, once again, his Madrid spirit. Sanchez spent the first five minutes to the government of the Community of Madrid with lies such as “of every ten euros that the Spanish government gave to the Community of Madrid to improve the lives of the middle class, three were used to give tax breaks to the richest.”
Sanchez, who directly cited the governments of Ayuso and Valencia Carlos Mazondenounced that “What the regional opposition leaders are doing is blaming the government at the heart of this problem” when “it is a big lie”. The head of government also dishonoured them by stating “that they are not given enough public resources”.
According to the data he presented in his conference before 150 civil society organizations, held at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid, “between 2018 and 2023, the Community of Madrid received almost 100 billion euros from the Spanish government, almost 21% more than what it had received. the government of Mariano Rajoy“. Sánchez continued by assuring that during this period “his tax cuts in favor of the highest placed have reduced the income of the Community of Madrid by 31,000,000 euros.”
According to the head of the Executive, the Autonomous Community of Madrid, “in order to balance its accounts”, “has reduced its investments in public education, to the point of having the lowest expenditure per student in all of Spain, thus placing itself at the bottom of the ranking”. reducing expenditure per capita and eliminating entire regional allocations so that all Spaniards, wherever they live, pay them. “This is not the way to defend equality among Spaniards,” he said.
In this sense, he gave as an example the social benefits that the most vulnerable families receive. According to his account, “in 2018, the Community of Madrid helped 27,000 vulnerable families with a minimum income of insertion that cost around 12.5 million per month”. In these six years, “it has been eliminated to the point that today, around 7,000 families benefit from it”. At the same time, he explained, “the number of Madrid households that receive the minimum vital income from the Spanish government has gone from 0 to 50,000 with an investment of 37 million euros”.
Direct attacks from Sanchez to Ayuso
Sanchez, who has hardly made any new proposalsreiterating his willingness to respect the commitments previously acquired, denounced that “the autonomies governed by the right have not devoted their resources to the citizens, they have devoted them to increase contracts for some companies with family ties “and to finance their tax gifts to those at the top.” “Let’s take the case of the Community of Madrid,” the president said.
Pedro Sánchez accused Ayuso of implement a “neoliberal agenda” contrary to the interest of the majority. “Goods against rights,” he exclaimed. According to him, in the Community of Madrid, “this year alone, one billion public euros have been diverted to private health care.”
“We believe that people’s education, health and dignity are not a business and cannot depend on their postcode or the money they have in the bank,” said the director general. Even though, according to him, “the welfare state has started to recover from the blows”, “many public services remain saturated, waiting lists are unacceptable and some services are of a quality that is not up to par.”
According to the head of the executive, Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s recipe consists of “lowering taxes for the rich, granting more public contracts to large companies and at the same time reducing services, resources and rights.”
General State Budgets
The President of the Government also confirmed that the Government will work towards the approval of the general state budgets and announced that the next Council of Ministers will re-approve the ceiling for non-financial expenditure for 2025, known as the expenditure ceiling, and the budgetary stability and public debt targets for all Administrations for submission to Parliament for debate and vote.
“I announce that the next Council of Ministers will once again approve the spending ceiling to be submitted to Parliament,” announced the head of the Executive during the opening ceremony of the political course. At the end of July, the plenary session of the Congress of Deputies rejected the objectives of budgetary stability and public debt for all administrations, which is the first step towards the approval of the public accounts, after the unexpected vote against Ensemble.
