It is not the economy, it is employment and housing. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has fully entered the campaign this Thursday from Barcelona, chesting out the newly known employment data. With more than 20.6 million affiliates to Social Security, a record in the historical series and a drop in unemployment of 76,000 people in April, Sánchez exhibited some achievements in "what really worries people" as "a success, not of the Government, but of the country, and the failure of the usual doomsayers”.
"Spain hits a record for employment while the opposition hits a record for despair", summed up the president in a rally held under the photovoltaic panel of the Forum, in front of a crowded attendance - some 2,500 people - and with the intervention of the socialist candidate for the mayor of Barcelona , Jaume Collboni, and the mayoress of Sant Adrià de Besòs, Filo Cañete.
And these achievements in something as important as employment mean that "never before in Spain have there been so many people employed" taking into account the environment, "during the war and after the pandemic" of the coronavirus, he remarked.
The head of the central Executive also focused on other issues with a clear social content, such as housing. Here he once again valued the recent housing law approved in Congress, the first of democracy, which will allow him, he said, to facilitate access to "decent and affordable" housing.
Sánchez reviewed some of the star social measures of the legislature, such as the increase in pensions, the minimum interprofessional wage or the labor reform. "We are defending what the majority thinks," he concluded.
After a brief environmental reference with the Doñana park as the protagonist, which served him to attack those who deny the climate emergency "by action or omission", the president promised to dedicate all the necessary resources to protect citizens from the consequences of the Ukrainian war and the drought.
And as for Catalonia, Sánchez recalled the work of his government to "establish coexistence" and the benefits provided by European funds to "reindustrialise Catalonia and Spain". "The Government is contributing to the reindustrialization of Catalonia. What are we not going to do when the wind votes in favor?" He proclaimed.
Sánchez also threw a cloak at the candidate Collboni. In his speech, he recalled that the city's best years were "between 1979 and 2011." "When it has been bigger, it has been with socialist mayors," he said, "because wealth was created and there was social justice, businesses were taken care of, but people were put first." With the recipe of "creating wealth and distributing it to the social majority", Sánchez proclaimed that the time has come to "recover the best version of Barcelona" at the hands of a new socialist mayor: Jaume Collboni.
In Moncloa they are aware of the importance of obtaining the mayoralty of Barcelona and in fact they see "very real" possibilities that Jaume Collboni will take it over on 28-M. Proof of this is that the President of the Government plans to close the electoral campaign again in Barcelona, on May 26, where former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will also intervene.
For his part, the candidate for Barcelona defended precisely the same recipe as the president to "recover the pride" of being from Barcelona. “Roof and work, these will be my occupations because they are the concerns of the people, with affordable housing, quality employment and a safe city”, summarized Collboni, who contrasted his model with that of the mayor Ada Colau and the former mayor and again candidate Xavier Trias, who yesterday referred to the "problems" to reach the end of the month by those who earn 3,000 euros a month. "Where does this man live? Who is he talking to? ”, Collboni wondered, defending his concern for all those Barcelonans who earn the minimum wage.
The candidate opted for a change in the Barcelona City Council that he has described as "urgent" and that involves "recovering the momentum, vigor and desire to project oneself to the world" represented by the socialist mayors who held the mayoral staff until twelve years ago years.
The event took place under the Fòrum's photovoltaic panel, already in the municipality of Sant Adrià de Besòs and with the Tres Xemeneies in the background. The mayoress of the city, Filo Cañete, defined the place that she had as a backdrop at the event as "a symbol of the industrial past and the audiovisual future that will generate a great metropolitan space", in the image and likeness of the joint project that led to the transformation of the Fòrum area in a consensual work between Barcelona and Sant Adrià.
The meeting this Thursday could not finally count on the intervention of the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, due to the delay that the plenary session of the Parliament accumulated this Thursday, where at the last minute an important bill was debated and voted on the measures that the Government must apply against the harsh drought that Catalonia is experiencing. The vote ended with a consensus between the three parties regarding urgent and medium-term investments to mitigate the scarcity of water and the sanctioning regime to which the municipalities will be subject.
