The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced this Tuesday, during his appearance in the Senate, an 8% increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI), up to 1,080 euros per month.

In this way, the salary goes from the current

1,000 euros

to 1,080

euros gross in fourteen payments

for this

2023

(15,120 euros per year).

The increase will foreseeably be approved in the Council of Ministers next Tuesday, February 7, and will enter into force

retroactively from January 1.

Sánchez has thus opened his appearance in the Senate in which he has also assured that he will request

loans of 94,000 million euros

from the European Commission to continue with the modernization of the Spanish economy.

"Our path is that of Germany, not that of a country of cheap and low-skilled labor"

"What worries the Spanish and what worried the Spanish five years ago?"

.

With this question the president has initiated his intervention and he himself has responded by assuring that neither the independence of Catalonia nor corruption are any longer part of the concerns of the majority of Spaniards.

The third, unemployment, continues to cause concern for many, but to a much lesser extent.

Regarding the political problems that continue to be at the top of the table, the fault lies with the opposition that does not comply with the Constitution.

Sánchez has opened his appearance in the Upper House in this way, pointing out the rival party and removing himself from all responsibility.

"Prophets of disaster and the apocalypse", he has described the opposition parties, while he has reserved for himself the role of savior of the interests of citizens at the cost of "leaving his skin" in the effort.

46% increase

With this rise,

the SMI accumulates an increase of 46.7% since 2018

when Pedro Sánchez arrived at Moncloa, since then it stood at

735.90 euros

.

In 2019 it rose to 900 euros (22.3%), in 2020 it went to 950 euros (+5.5%), in 2021 it was frozen due to the pandemic situation until in September it rose to 965 euros (+ 1.6%) and in 2022 it rose to 1,000 euros from January (+3.6%).

Due to the fact that

inflation

has hit the Spanish economy hard in 2022 - it closed on average at

8.6% -

and the

loss of purchasing power

suffered by workers in the country, given that

wages have grown by 2.7 %

in the year according to the Ministry's Collective Agreements Statistics, the unions have pushed hard for the SMI to rise in 2023 to compensate for the increase in prices.

The measure was announced this afternoon by the President of the Government, despite the fact that the Second Vice President of the Government,

Yolanda Díaz

, was expected to do so , after the meeting she had with

Pepe Álvarez

, UGT General Secretary, and

Unai Sordo

, his CCOO counterpart, in the Ministry of Labour.

The CEOE

did not attend the appointment ,

which last night announced that it would not attend because it had not received a response to its written proposal to raise the SMI to 1,040 euros and because it had not received any communication from the Ministry during the month of January.

Before the meeting, the Secretary of State for Employment,

Joaquín Pérez-Rey,

criticized the employers for their "lack of responsibility" by not going to a negotiation whose result will affect many companies in this country, a reproach shared by the union representatives.

The unions -especially UGT- asked for an increase up to

1,100 euros.

Yolanda Díaz had already advanced last week that she was in favor of raising it to the "upper part" of the fork that the experts had recommended, that is, around 1,082 euros.

That committee, which presented its final report in December, advised the Government to raise the SMI to

a minimum of 1,046 euros

and

a maximum of 1,082

, so that it represented

60% of the country's average salary.

Measures against inflation

After the surprise announcement about the SMI, Sánchez, has threaded in his speech the list of all the measures agreed by the Government to try to alleviate the effect of inflation caused by the war in Ukraine.

"We have mobilized a total of 45,000 million euros

to protect the social majority", he said, "while we approved essential reforms for the country".

Despite this triumphant start, Sánchez has denied being "self-indulgent."

He has predicted that in 2023 inflation "will continue to drop, although it will still impact the pocket of citizens."

The president has insisted that

"ultra healers"

blame the "oversized state", with "many taxes";

to "immigrants who steal jobs" and "ecological fanaticism".

"In addition to these three culprits, I am also the cause of all the evils as Zapatero and González were before," Sánchez assured in an exercise of vestimism, before blaming all this on the response that was given a decade to the financial crisis.

With the bull lucky to attack the Popular Party, the President of the Government has embarked on comparing his recipe to face the crisis and the one that was launched to face the financial crisis that began in 2009. Sánchez has also not hesitated in blaming the current situation on large companies that, he said,

"pay extraordinary bonuses to their managers and not to their employees".

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