The agreement reached between three wayward councilors of Más Madrid with Mayor José Luis Martínez Almeida and Deputy Mayor Begoña Villacís has cleared the approval of the budgets in the City Council of the capital. The pact, which is reached after the door slammed by Vox in the town hall to the municipal government, was widely celebrated on Monday by both parties while the rest of the left-wing opposition considered it “a democratic scam” and “an indignity” for the people of Madrid. .
Among the group of splinter councilors from Más Madrid, one of them, Felipe Llamas – Manuela Carmena’s former chief of staff – has chosen to renounce the act because he disagrees with that alliance to approve the accounts. It happened during the night of Monday, hours after the spokesperson for the councilors of the self-proclaimed formation Recupera Madrid, Marta Higueras, appeared at a press conference with representatives of the negotiating government team and the mayor by videoconference.
Among the measures that these councilors took from the council is to declare Almudena Grandes as “Favorite Daughter” of the city of Madrid after Almeida himself strongly opposed it in the Plenary where he was requested after the death of the writer. Then the mayor and his spokesperson, Inmaculada Sanz, accused the leftist groups of “using partisan” and “nauseating” his death. Only a few weeks later the government team has agreed to this request to carry out its accounts.
Another two of the points that Higueras highlighted the most was “the return of Pride” to the capital and the “support for LGTBI diversity” with the contribution of 150,000 euros extra for the competitive participation of these groups, as well as the “elimination of the grants to entities that harass women in pregnancy termination clinics “, a red line that was put on the table in response to the demands of Vox in this regard. The Madrina Foundation, linked to this far-right group, will be affected by the agreement.
The wayward councilors of Más Madrid who have agreed with Almeida also boast of having started the mayor’s commitment to greater “social and labor support for unaccompanied minors” and of the “provision of an emergency housing fund for those families who, due to a crisis or pandemic cannot afford to pay for their housing. ” To this they added the “creation of attention and information offices for the direct management of the Minimum Vital Income (IMV) and” the implementation of a humanitarian energy emergency solution for the Cañada Real.
Another measure that they have sold as an “achievement” is that “there will be no tax gift”, that is, the mayor partially renounces his promised tax reduction of 60 million euros in the IBI, which instead of being linear and generalized it will be higher in properties with a cadastral value of less than 300,000 euros. But it doesn’t tax large building owners any more, as they requested. Another point includes “the stoppage of the cession of residential municipal land.”
Almeida, in addition, is committed to the “reduction of the City Council’s indebtedness” and that the Madrid transport in the EMT buses is free “in periods of high pollution and days of episodes of high traffic density” for which a income item of 25 million euros. In addition, 1.5 million will be allocated for the implementation of offices for the attention and management of the Minimum Vital Income (IMV); another 2 million destined to subsidize the rent of families in a housing emergency situation.
Along with this is the “cession of Prado 30 to the Community of Madrid – the old La Ingobernable building – for the construction of a Health Center and cultural facilities in dialogue with the residents of the district.” It will have a game of 300,000 according to the announcement made this Monday.
The pact adds the “reinforcement of BiciMad with direct management from EMT”; “the creation of new bike lanes” and “line of aid for green roofs and installation of renewables”.
More Madrid asks that the plenary session not be held
The new situation in which the City Council has remained after the resignation of Felipe Llamas has caused the majority group of the opposition, Más Madrid, to have demanded that the mayor not hold the Plenary session now, set for this Wednesday, in which the accounts will be approved, which will go ahead, although with one less vote in favor. The spokeswoman for Más Madrid, Rita Maestre, believes that “this plenary session does not comply with the minimum democratic guarantees, so we ask that it be postponed until these guarantees are given.” “It is not known who will go and, worse still, who will be able to vote after the resignation of one of the defending councilors with what the mayor had,” he lamented. Maestre has requested the “urgent” meeting of a Board of Spokespersons.
In his opinion, the City Council is experiencing “one more chapter of the profound crisis that the Almeida government is going through, a government with no direction, no horizon, that works by lurch and that has neither the majority nor the stability necessary to remove forward your policies. ” The spokesperson for Más Madrid has blamed Almeida for the chaotic situation created and has asked the PP councilor “to stop dirtying the institutions to hide his political weakness.”
The PSOE has also spoken, whose spokesman for the Treasury, Enma López, has described the agreement as “hasty”, as he believes has been demonstrated after the resignation of Llamas. “It is not certain that Almeida is a consensus mayor, what is certain is that he has met with three people willing to whitewash all his policies,” López said.
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