Former President

Felipe González

criticized at the

1st International Expansion Forum

the management of the pandemic by the central government and the autonomous communities.

With measured words and courage not to offend the rulers -

"I would not like to be in the engine room now

" -, the former socialist leader stated that he does not understand the constitutional mechanism of the state of alarm as the Government is interpreting it, criticized the chaos of the so-called co-governance to manage the pandemic and questioned the effectiveness of the approved Budgets sent to Congress, since they are made to comply with the PSOE-United We Can pact, without taking into account the consequences of the serious health crisis that it has changed everything.

The former president gave voice to the many doubts that exist in the political world and also in the legal world regarding the application of the decree of the state of alarm approved by the Government and that this week Congress will debate.

In his opinion, the competence of the Government in this matter

"is not delegable" in the autonomous communities

, as it appears in the decree.

González showed his amazement at the chaos that exists in the so-called co-governance by which

each autonomous community establishes its own rules without a national strategy

.

"I do not know if I am going to be able to leave Madrid, cross Castilla-La Mancha or enter Extremadura, and if I know today, perhaps I will not know tomorrow," he said in relation to the measures that are published every day in the bulletins of the communities.

"Now to tell your children what time to return home you have to read the BOE," he ironically.

The former president acknowledged the difficulty of the rulers in "

giving certainty in times of uncertainty"

, although he advised that citizens be told "the closest thing to the truth".

A six-month state of alarm, as the Government proposes, gives little confidence, for example, to investors.

The Budget bill

sent by the Government to Congress

has not convinced González either

, since "it is focused on complying with the agreement between the two parties" before the pandemic changed everything

.

"No one, no one should think that after the pandemic the scenario will be the same as before the pandemic.

They have to make a clean slate."

The former socialist president predicted that Spain may lose "twenty years" from the economic point of view -to return to 2001- once the health crisis is over, although he opined that, judging by the evolution of the pandemic, the virus will stay a long time with us.

Inequality

González participated in the round table of the I Expansión International Forum dedicated to the inequality gap that the pandemic will leave in Spanish society and

was especially concerned about the scandalous levels of youth unemployment in Spain

.

According to the latest EPA, youth unemployment is close to 40% in our country, the highest figure in the entire EU.

In the same way, the president of the

CEOE

,

Antonio Garamendi, predicted a very dark time

for small hotel and restaurant companies.

"What is coming is very hard and the message of the six months of a state of alarm means that we are also charging next Easter."

There are 350,000 hospitality establishments, many of which are facing closure, taking into account, in addition, that they are the major victims of the restrictions to stop the brutal second wave that the country is suffering.

In communities such as Catalonia and La Rioja, the closure of the hotel industry has been decreed to stop the second wave of the coronavirus.

The boss of the businessmen, as González also did, asked for the unity of the political forces and regretted that when he goes abroad they ask him about the King, and about Catalonia.

According to Garamendi,

the international image projected by political polarization is very negative.

The head of the Spanish employers asked the Government, as the governor of the Bank of Spain had done previously, to commit "temporary spending" to alleviate the effects of the pandemic, but not "structural spending" and censured the Government Budgets that , in his opinion, they are "ideological".

An opinion signed by

the Minister of Finance of the Community of Madrid, Javier Fernández Lasquety,

who defended the liberal policies applied by his Government, against the Government Budgets that, he said, involve more spending, more taxes and more debt.

Lasquety gave the example of Cuba as a more egalitarian but poor society;

compared to Switzerland, less egalitarian, but richer.

The philosopher José Antonio Marina

, in the same round table, emphasized the relevance of education for societies to advance and the unequal way in which Spanish schoolchildren are facing the calamity of the pandemic, with different circumstances depending on the community autonomous where they live.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Spain

  • Catalonia

  • United we can

  • Pedro Sanchez

  • PSOE

  • Madrid

  • The Rioja

  • CEOE

  • Unemployment

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