"After these hazardous and complex years due to the pandemic, we must not forget how important it is to have free, universal and quality public healthcare in our country," Pedro Sánchez highlighted this Sunday at a PSOE electoral rally held in Malaga before 1,500 supporters. After attending the Goya gala on Saturday in Seville, where he recalled that some winners and nominees took the opportunity to defend public health, and at the same time that this Sunday a tide of white handkerchiefs protested again in the streets of Madrid against the health policy of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the President of the Government has called for preserving "one of the main pillars of the welfare state" in the face of the recipes that he has blamed on the Partido Popular government. In Madrid and Andalusia, just two of the territories where Sánchez seeks to recover electoral pulse before the appointment with the polls on May 28.
"Faced with the PP model, which is that whoever can be cured, with its privatizations or with its cuts to public health, we Socialists defend public, dignified, quality, free and universal health," Sánchez cried. This has been, precisely, his strong message of the day. And he has wielded, in the face of these "neoliberal" recipes that he has attributed to the formation of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the action of his Executive. “That is why, when we came to the Government, we removed pharmaceutical co-payments from many elderly people, we have increased investments by 1,000 million euros in two years to strengthen primary care, and we are allocating 800 million euros so that many public hospitals have new equipment and new technological infrastructures, which allow us not only to reduce waiting lists but also to improve the quality with which patients are cared for”, highlighted the Chief Executive.
Sánchez stressed that it is "an investment never seen in these last 40 years of democracy." "An investment that the autonomous communities would have to make, but as we know from the Government of Spain that it is one of the main concerns that Spaniards have, we say that we are here to defend one of the main pillars of the welfare state", he has puffed out his chest, to great applause.
The President of the Government has thus used his management to "solve the real problems that matter to the people." And he took advantage of the PSOE rally, in which he supported the candidacy of Dani Pérez for mayor of Malaga, to announce that the Council of Ministers will fulfill its commitment and approve next Tuesday the 8% increase in the minimum interprofessional wage, up to the 1,080 euros per month. An announcement, already agreed with the unions to alleviate the loss of purchasing power, which has been accompanied by harsh criticism of the CEOE led by Antonio Garamendi.
"I ask the employers for consistency and responsibility, because you cannot be demanding salary sacrifices from those below, while there is a feast for those above," Sánchez warned. “There are many entrepreneurs and self-employed workers who will understand what I say. In this country there cannot be two yardsticks: one for the majority, for ordinary people, and another for the elitist minority”, he highlighted, again to great applause from those attending the socialist electoral act. "Here there will be no funnel law, very wide for the majority and very narrow for a select minority," he insisted.
In this way, he has justified the increases in the minimum wage in progress, with the aim of placing it at 60% of the average salary at the end of the legislature, or the revaluation of pensions according to the CPI, in contrast to the "neoliberalist" theses in which he has placed to the PP, after the Executive of Mariano Rajoy used "thousands of millions of euros to rescue bankrupt banks, while the minimum interprofessional wage and pensions were frozen." Now, he has highlighted that a progressive coalition government, "with the socialists at the forefront", has created new taxes on financial institutions, energy corporations and large estates, while raising the minimum wage and revaluing pensions.
Sánchez has once again avoided any reference to the controversy over the reform of the law of only yes is yes in which the PSOE clashes with United We Can. But he has highlighted the endorsement of the Constitutional Court, now with a progressive majority, to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's abortion law of 2010, appealed then by the PP. “It has been very difficult for us to unblock the situation caused by the PP in the Constitutional Court. And we have already seen the first victory: the voluntary termination of pregnancy law approved by a socialist government is guaranteed and recognized as constitutional ”, he congratulated himself. "The women win and the right loses!" He has exclaimed.
