The president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, has advanced that the Valencian Community will start 2022 with the record number of more than two million people affiliated with Social Security and with 10 million vaccines against COVID-19 already administered to citizens in the fight against the pandemic.
This is what he has indicated in his end-of-year message, recorded in L’Elca, the house of the poet Francisco Brines, from where he has invited to live each day of the new year that begins with “the value of the quiet word.”
The president began his speech by reminding “the 8,097 Valencian lives that the pandemic has taken away” and giving strength to those who are now “in the hospital or at home suffering from an illness that has already exceeded 570,000 Valencians.”
Ximo Puig stressed that last year he addressed the public at this time, trusting in a social and economic recovery, and “since that moment of uncertainty, 81,000 Valencians have found work, 222 every day”, to the point that, such and as announced, it will be January “reaching the historical record of workers in the Valencian Community: more than two million people affiliated with Social Security.”
He stressed at this point that the “priority” for 2022 is precisely “to maintain this power in the recovery in the form of more employment and better employment”, because “it is indecency that there are poor workers” and “it is an injustice to see families workers who cannot live with dignity from their work “.
As he has indicated, a year ago, also at this time, “5,000 vaccines had been given; today we are close to 10 million doses administered in the Valencian Community”. “We have more defenses,” said the president, who has insisted that, as long as the hospital situation allows it, it is appropriate that the restrictive measures that were adopted in 2020 give way to the protection measures of 2022.
Puig has also advocated for a society focused on employment, respect and equality of gender and opportunities, and has indicated that a “fundamental pillar” to achieve this will be to maintain stability, “which strengthens the Valencian Community and positions us -he said- as a territory with security for the economy and companies “.
The Valencian Community, an example of stability
The head of the Consell has precisely placed the Valencian Community as an example of that stability, after the Consell that he presides has approved its Budgets in a timely manner for seven years in a row. “In front of the noise from other places, here we are in what touches, because it is the time of the unit, to push between all, without partisanships”, has said.
In this sense, he has invited to “flee from dogmas and extremes” and has asked to extend this plural look to the way of understanding Spain, because “it is time to appreciate its diversity and to better sew its lands and its people.”
In this context, he has proposed that Spain take in 2022 “a firm step that makes its” shared project “viable. For the president, “if we were able to agree on the Constitution and entry into Europe, how can we not agree on fair regional financing? There is no alternative to the agreement.”
For this reason, he has called all political groups and 17 communities to a consensus in favor of a “great agreement for a just Spain”. “That is our discourse: that of justice and equality” in the demands on financing, on decentralization and on infrastructures such as the Mediterranean Corridor, he added.
“We have already seen where the independence movement leads: nowhere; we also see where centralist egoism leads: to division, and what we need is to add, with the serene word and without shouting,” he also argued.
40 years of the Statute of Autonomy
The president recalled, on the other hand, that in 2022 the Community will celebrate “40 years of the Statute of Autonomy, 40 years of self-government recovered after the ‘desfeta d’Almansa'”, and has indicated that this rule has been and is ” a guarantee of progress in daily life “, and also” a framework of coexistence where we all fit. ”
“Diversity is a privilege that makes us richer, and the Statute is the book that allows five million different ways of being Valencian, that allows us to remember today the great poet Paco Brines, Cervantes Prize in Spanish, and that, at the same time Once, in 2022, he will make us celebrate Any Joan Fuster, a universal thinker who wrote in Valencian and who already warned against fanaticism with a phrase: ‘Tots, si arribem a tindre raó, la tenim a mitges’ “.
The head of the Consell has also referred to some challenges “that cannot be buried by any pandemic” such as that of sexist violence, “a repression that makes real equality impossible and that has to end now.”
The president has also stated that “responsibility” is the word that best sums up 2021, a year in which Valencian citizenship is an “example” for “everyone”, with a vaccination rate of 94%. “Together we have saved 1,160 lives compared to the average mortality in all of Spain, and this has been the result of the efforts of Valencian society, with the enormous work of health professionals at the fore”, he pointed out.
“Now it is crucial – after almost two years – to protect mental and emotional health. It is time for science and prudence, with accelerated vaccination and joint responsibility, because without science we are not going anywhere, but without conscience either”, has remarked.
www.eldiario.es