The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, launched on Thursday a battery of proposals on economic matters before the start of the school year that contradicts what he himself and his party do and have done systematically from power. Among the measures proposed by Feijóo in an act in Zaragoza, he called on the coalition government to expand the state fund for aid in the purchase of textbooks. A fund that is then managed by the autonomous communities and that the PP asks to double, up to 100 million. But when Feijóo became the Presidency of the Xunta de Galicia, he did just the opposite: reduce the aid directed at public education students to access textbooks as much as possible.
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In 2009, Galicia had a book loan system that, in practice, meant that the manuals were free for most students in public schools. That year, the PP won the elections and regained control of the Xunta de Galicia. One of Feijóo’s first decisions at the head of the regional government was to eliminate the previous system and recover scholarships for families, although only for the lowest incomes.
The consequence was, on the one hand, that the beneficiaries of aid from the Xunta de Feijóo were notably reduced. In addition, the families received the help after buying the books, so they had to disburse the money first.
Not only Feijóo undid the system of free books in Galicia. A few years later, Mariano Rajoy launched the same policy. After reaching the Government on the back of the promise to fight against the economic crisis, the PP Executive began a process of drastic social cuts that attacked basic pillars of the Welfare State, such as Health, social services, benefits or Education .
In this field, he highlighted the work of his former minister, José Ignacio Wert, who systematically devastated redistribution systems of income through funds and scholarships like the ones that now the opposition leader Feijóo proposes to increase.
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