“The PP has called these elections for the PP, to calm Casado’s anxiety and try to give him a chance as if they were primaries and score a bit because it seems that there is another competitor in the making.” This is how critical the former Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has shown himself in the campaign for the elections in Castilla y León, who this weekend has starred in a tour of municipalities in the Bierzo region in the province of León.
The PSOE has pulled the former Prime Minister for his campaign seeking the vote for the elections on February 13 for the socialist candidate Luis Tudanca. It has been two days to tour the mining remains of the region and projects from his time as president, to end with a rally this Sunday in Camponaraya. Zapatero’s presence in the campaign coincided with that of José María Aznar, who starred in a PP rally this Saturday in Valladolid.
According to the former president “the elections are designed for the PP, for Casado, whose program you know is focused on giving us lessons on livestock, viticulture, water and raising few expectations for citizens. Voting thinking about the needs of Castilla y León, about decentralization, is voting for the PSOE, which has shown it”.
Zapatero has criticized Pablo Casado and his opposition work, asking for more humility when exercising it: “When you don’t recognize things you tend to make a fool of yourself, like when he said months ago that Spain was bankrupt.” The former president believes that popular criticism is wrong “when it is known that there are more jobs in Spain today than before the pandemic and that unemployment has dropped to 2007 figures, it is not easy to be an opposition.”
Decentralization
The former leader of the PSOE has boasted about the decentralization of headquarters proposed by his party and the one that was carried out in his time with the creation of the Ciuden de Ponferrada or the Incibe headquarters in León, and for this reason he has asked the PP to position himself before the debate opened precisely by Pedro Sánchez at a rally in Ponferrada.
“If we want the 35-year cycle of population loss to end in Castilla y León, certainly except in the stage presided over by the Government of Spain, of progressive demoralization, to see that the trend is to see that only young people leave the community, on the 13th we must bet on a new model, decentralization and equity in services”, emphasized the former president.
“The PP must say here in El Bierzo, here in Castilla y León, if it supports the decentralization of State agencies and the Board to the different provinces and territories, this is the great question of these elections. There will be no recovery of the population if there is no rapprochement between administrations and development centers, and there will not be if there is no decentralization and equitable public services,” he insisted.
The former president of León has spent the weekend in mining towns such as Brañuelas, Fabero or Bembibre or visited the main project that he had in his time at the head of the Executive in the Bercian region, the Energy Museum encompassed in the Ciuden. This project, which Zapatero has assured had an investment of 200 million euros under his mandate, today has remained, after the cuts applied at the time of the Rajoy government, in the aforementioned museum, another finished and unused building and some small projects of local development away from its initial purpose. The capture of CO2, the main initial project, is today ruled out due to lack of commercial viability, although the Government of Pedro Sánchez is committed to the reconversion of the Ciuden into a driving force for fair transition projects in the mining regions.
In addition, the former president has left a clear green message in the mining basin asking to recover “that look at nature that is so exciting, which perhaps was lost in times of more industrial development”, considering that “that can be done now” in the heat of the funds Europeans and the energy transition, which has especially affected the regions that were left without mining.
“The PP is nervous, it has not done its homework with Castilla y León. Tudanca should have been president, Ciudadanos was wrong and now there are more reasons for that change. These two years there has been a failed Mañueco government and the proof is that it has had to call these elections without rhyme or reason, without reasons or program and, of course, less with management,” he concluded.
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