One year and 60 days after taking office as president of Aragon, Jorge Azcón goes today for the first time to the Moncloa Palace to meet his national counterpart, Pedro Sánchez. This is a highly anticipated meeting, which is part of a cycle of meetings between the central government and all regional leaders, and in which the Aragonese leader hopes to return to the AVE with clear commitments and, above all, tickets.
An appointment that arrives precisely in a special week for Zaragoza, in the middle of the Pilar Festival, and two days later Industry Minister Jordi Hereu will announce a strong boost to the Stellantis battery gigafactory. It will also be after the head of Culture, Ernest Urtasun (Sumar), lit the fuse by linking the restitution of Sijena’s assets in 2017 to a political decision, which was not well received even within the Aragonese PSOE .
To prepare for the meeting, Azcón began his own meetings with the entire opposition, from which emerged a long document of 108 pages and 44 urgent demands.. It is not in vain that an authoritative voice in Aragonese politics once said that the ideal scenario for a regional president was for Moncloa to have a different color than Pignatelli, and Azcón is clear that he must in take the opportunity to put as much pressure on the central government as possible.
The first point highlights the intentions of the Aragonese president on one of the most important issues for the future of the Community: regional financing and “frontal opposition” to the “economic agreement” with Catalonia and the cancellation of the debt. In this sense, Aragon demands from Sánchez an increase in funding for autonomous communities and a new system that “takes into account the particularities” of the territory.
Afterwards, Azcón devotes a large part to infrastructure, such as the A-68 highway (Zaragoza-Alcañiz-Vinaroz), the A-40 (Teruel-Cuenca) or the Cantabrian-Mediterranean corridor.. This also affects the recovery of AVE frequencies to Huesca lost during the pandemic and, above all, weekend frequencies, as well as monitoring the deadlines planned by France for the reopening of Canfranc.
Energy and water
In reality, those 44 requests are now 43, because one of them was Loss VEC III’s resolution to block the Stellantis gigfactory. In any case, Azcón will put on the table the need to adapt the electricity network to all the investment projects that the Community has in progresswith numerous data centers waiting to see the light of day.
In the water block several well-known names stand out, such as the modified quarter of the Yesa regrowth or a new project for Biscarrués. The latter has already been annulled by the Supreme Court and the Minister of Ecological Transformation, Teresa Ribera, has closed the door to further investment. The 50% co-financing of the Pirineos Plan will be another issue to be discussed.
Depopulation and “other strategic issues”
Depopulation is another sector in which Azcón will have a particular impact, demand an increase in the Teruel Investment Fund (FITE), which annually grants 60 million euros to projects in the provincedivided equally between Aragon and the State. In addition, he will ask that aid for business operations be increased to the maximum authorized 20%, currently 1%.
Finally, Azcón will also ask you “other strategic questions”, such as collaboration on housing policies.a State Pact for the migration crisis, adherence to the Goya Bicentenary Master Plan, the creation of a High Performance Center in the Pyrenees or the reversal of the exclusion of Huesca as sub-host of the World Cup 2030.
