Galicia and Castile and León joined their voices to demand more public funding “in solidarity” with territories in which the provision of services “costs more” due to the circumstances that affect their population. This is, as the president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, explained on Tuesday, the case of the Galician Community, which faces serious challenges of “dispersion and aging of the population”; Concretely, this amounted to “500 million euros” the additional cost that this represents for the Community ensure that within its framework basic services are administered “compared to other territories where these scenarios do not occur”.
Rueda and his Castilian-Leonese counterpart, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, spoke to this effect on Tuesday, during a meeting they held at the Templar Castle, in Ponferrada, on the occasion of the Ancares Forum: The Challenges of the North -West. There, the Galician presidentconsidered “legitimate” for communities that support more residents to demand greater funding, but he stressed that there are other criteria, beyond the census figures, which should affect this distribution. Specifically, those that make it difficult to provide basic services, and which funds should ensure they cover.
“We also have our circumstances that make us need more funding. Taking care of a 70 or 80 year old person is not the same as taking care of a young person: It’s about less demand for health services, less demand for passive rights. Our calculation is that the dispersion of the population and the aging of our population represent, compared to other territories where these circumstances do not exist, an additional cost of 500 million euros for the provision of obligatory basic services” , said the Galician president.
This is why he understands that the “tendency” to “suggest” that funding established on the basis of general criteria is adjusted to the possible needs of the territories is “dangerous” on the part of the State. “We will have to examine the effective cost of providing services,” Rueda retorted, “and provide them with equal quality throughout Spain.” As a principle for finding a solution, he called for dialogue with the Government to establish a “new financing model” “urgently, as soon as possible”, based on the fact that both sides will have to “give up certain things for everyone to win”, always rejecting “bilateralities” and betting on a system of “basic solidarity”, even if it may cost “more money”.
Precisely, Rueda linked this question to that of possible closed-door conversations with the Government, making explicit reference to the Catalan Administration: “Negotiating bilaterally is to the detriment of the rest of the autonomous communities; This is something that we cannot tolerate and which harms us very seriously. This concert system under discussion with Catalonia would mean that Galicia would stop receiving, not in a new framework, but compared to what we currently have, 600 million euros”, situation that the Galician territory “cannot afford”, he added.
In conclusion, Alfonso Rueda presented another point of view: “If the Balearic Islands and Madrid, the other two net contributing communities, asked for the same thing”, something that “fortunately they have neither asked nor are asking because they understand the concept of global solidarity”, the damage would worsen: This would mean a loss of “2 billion euros” for Galicia compared to the planned financing. “It’s serious, we have to talk about it and we have to do it as soon as possible, before there is a fait accompli without going back (…) Enter into quota systems for our financing and service delivery is absolute madness that we cannot even allow to arise,” he said.
Reconstruction of the Castro Viaduct
Mañueco succeeded Rueda and considered, in the same sense, that it was the duty of the Government to worry about covering the needs of all territories, at the risk of forming a “hemiplegic Spain” in which development occurs unevenly. He summed it up by saying that “showing patience” on the part of communities “does not mean looking the other way” and recalled that They have investments requested from the Central Administration in terms of infrastructure, as collected by Ep. In this sense, the Galician leader spoke of the reconstruction of the Castro (León) viaduct that connects Galicia to the plateau, which suffered a collapse last Sunday, trusting the government to “take it seriously”. “As if, instead of falling the viaduct that connects Galicia to Castilla y León, the viaduct that connects an autonomous community that everyone can have in mind had fallen,” quipped the Xunta leader.
