The Government of Pedro Sánchez faces this week the debate on the state of the nation, an appointment that has not taken place since 2015 and in which the head of the Executive will render an account of what has been done in these last two years of the legislature and will explain how to face the great challenges that Spain has ahead. The situation is not easy in a context of war in Ukraine, energy supply problems throughout Europe and runaway inflation.
The Spanish are leaving behind a pandemic, the effects of which still reverberate in many underinvested health and geriatric centers, but they are now focusing their concern on the exorbitant prices of food and basic supplies that are reaching record figures.
Sánchez wields the social agenda and the investments made in this area in the last two years before the opposition and allies. An additional billion to combat child poverty, the deployment of the minimum vital income, rental aid for young people, the youth bonus for culture... the labor reform or the increase in the minimum interprofessional salary. Initiatives that have an impact or will have it, but new investments will be necessary so that no one is left behind.
The rise in prices in Spain exasperates families, who see how disposable income after subtracting fixed costs –mortgage, energy, transport and food– is getting smaller and smaller. Prices go up and up and up non-stop. In June, according to the provisional data from the INE, year-on-year inflation reached 10.2%, a figure that is 1.6 points higher than the eurozone average. Government measures to stop the escalation have so far proven totally ineffective. What will happen from now? Experts foresee a certain truce in the European escalation after the summer, although everything can go wrong if the much-feared Russian gas cut occurs in the last quarter. This scenario would be catastrophic for Germany and for all of Europe, Spain included. If this is not the case and wage increases remain far from current inflation levels to adjust to expectations of price increases in the medium term, the latter part of 2022 and, above all, 2023 should provide some relief. Some non-energy commodities are already falling sharply in recent weeks, which may facilitate some moderation in prices. Prepared by: Lalo Agustina.
That more will be paid for gas is already discounted in all macroeconomic scenarios. The gas futures market in the Netherlands, a reference in Europe, marks rising prices until the end of December, and the Iberian Mibgas, until January 2023. The big question is whether or not there will also be supply cuts. The chances of that happening are high in Germany and other Eastern European countries heavily dependent on Russia. In Spain, only 8% of Russian gas is consumed, easily substitutable by other suppliers, although it will not be cheap. Nothing is ruled out in a world that has been locked up at home due to a pandemic and in a country that has suffered cold waves like Filomena, but beyond very exceptional situations it does not seem that Spain is going to have to face those cuts. Reserves are currently at 72% and will reach the 80% claimed by the EU in October. That's an assured 40-day supply. As for electricity, the Iberian exception that the Government battled seems to be bearing fruit. The futures market places the price of the MWh of electricity in Spain more than 100 euros below what Italy, Germany and, above all, France mark. Prepared by: Pilar Blázquez.
The Government has yet to definitively approve the Housing Law with which to strengthen the park of public flats that in Spain presents testimonial figures and establish measures to curb the prices of the rental market. Precisely, the most controversial point of this law has been the temporary and limited limitation of the rental price and the establishment of stressed areas. The delimitation of these areas and the application of the law, which the entities for the right to housing maintain will not affect market prices, will depend on the autonomous communities.
The situation is worrying in the big capitals where rents have increased exponentially, while wages have stagnated or even fallen. Having a job is no longer a guarantee of being able to pay the rent. Hence, the vast majority of evictions are due to non-payment of rent. Residential exclusion is the main factor of poverty and one of the worst-off groups are young people condemned to share a flat beyond their youth. To reverse this situation, it is urgent to increase local, regional and state budgets aimed at creating more public housing. Prepared by: Silvia Angulo
Sending troops to Ukraine is not a scenario that is contemplated since the country invaded by Russia is not part of NATO. In the event that Vladimir Putin attacked a member state, article 5 could be activated, which establishes that an attack on a partner represents an attack on all the nations of the organization. After passing through Parliament, the sending of troops would be a fact.
However, a decision made at the last summit of the Atlantic Alliance in Madrid could, with great probability, affect the Spanish armed forces more imminently. The partners agreed to increase high readiness troops from 40,000 to more than 300,000, so it will be necessary to train more soldiers in the face of a hypothetical Russian aggression in Eastern European countries.
There are currently 600 troops deployed in Lithuania, where they carry out aerial police work, with fighter planes. But the Baltic countries aspire to receive many more reinforcements in the coming months, so Spain – which is one of the most active allied countries in sending troops – could increase its contingent, according to all the sources consulted. Prepared by: Joaquin Vera
The million dollar question that, to this day, remains unanswered. The pandemic caused a turnaround in the national scene, forcing the Government to invest billions of euros not only in material and human resources to combat it, but also to deploy a set of social measures to protect families and workers. The forecast is that none of this will be repeated even if the pandemic continues with an eighth, ninth or eleventh wave while waiting for there to be vaccines that immunize the population. Although this aspect does not seem clear either. What does seem so is that the new waves will be more similar to the current one than to the first ones. The Executive must continue to invest in the purchase of vaccines, while preparing to strengthen the public health network - the State Public Health Agency is in the pipeline - to allow it to face current and future challenges in this area and which, according to experts, there will be many, among other aspects, due to globalization and climate change. The pandemic has forced the creation of multidisciplinary networks, laboratories and investment in health technology that experts hope will continue, although some communities are already withdrawing resources. Prepared by: C. López
Nobody doubts that health will be one of the axes of confrontation in the debate. The pandemic has made it clear that the National Health System has had serious structural problems for years – aggravated by the cutback decisions adopted in 2012 – and that they have been hidden behind the repeated phrase that we have one of the best health systems in the world. world. The reality is that of the entire system, primary care is the most affected, because it is there, in the first care step, where the cuts were focused. There is a lack of material and human resources, deficits denounced by professionals over and over again without remedy. The Government and communities approved the Primary Care Action Plan at the end of 2021, where they commit to reducing the temporary rate of health workers to below 8%. For this, the communities will have to publish specific job announcements for primary school professionals who stabilize their positions before December 31 and they will have to be resolved by the end of 2023 – Pedro Sánchez announced it ten days ago as something new and it was not –. The Government has promised to transfer almost 300 million to primary school – finalist budgets – in 2022. Prepared by: Celeste López
The pandemic exposed the treatment that the institutions –with the passivity of society– were giving to the elderly. What happened in the residences for the elderly – also for people with disabilities – evidenced the most absolute abandonment of a part of the population to which sooner or later we will all belong. The Government will show its chest with the Agreement on Accreditation and Quality of Centers and Services of the Dependency Care System, approved a few days ago by the minimum. The agreement aims to turn care for the elderly upside down, with a boost to home care and telecare, after assuming that it is in their own home where people want to live. And when that is no longer possible, there is the resource of residences, which change their philosophy. They will no longer be "car parks for the elderly" but where the opinion of the residents counts and care moves away from childishness. The new residences will be smaller, with individual rooms, designed with spaces for 15 people to live together and with permanent and sufficient professionals. Residences already built have until 2030 to upgrade. Prepared by: Celeste López
This same question is asked in many other countries around the world because the change towards a new, much more complex era – globalization, technology, climate change, citizenship – forces us to review the essential learning and skills, the minimum for any citizen of the world. The approach is not to accumulate content defined decades ago, but rather to acquire certain knowledge in order to mobilize it when needed. In that are the new Spanish curricula that from next year teachers must apply, assuming a new exercise for many. The objective is to change the way of teaching –fields will be imposed over specialty subjects–. The students will have a minimum knowledge common to that of their parents, but they will know how to function better than them in other fields considered essential for the world to come (OECD, Unesco, EU). From the paper to the classroom: how will a minimum competence be achieved with the passage of the course with failures and the reduction of repetitions? With this system, teachers become the touchstone of the system. What will the Government do to make them the best? Prepared by: C. Farreras
The repeated records of maximum temperatures, the frequent heat waves, the droughts that keep water reserves below 50% and the ravages of storms and floods on riverbanks and coasts make it necessary to face the repeated manifestations of climate change with better planning. in Spain – protection of the elderly, agricultural model in accordance with water resources...–
The ecological damage is further aggravated by an agri-food industry that must renounce unsustainable behavior – the death of the Mar Menor, pollution by nitrates, macro-farms, the drying up of the Doñana marshes.
In the solutions chapter, a just ecological transition is needed. That the commitment to the electric car is accompanied by facilities for recharging; that investments in renewables be legitimized with a participatory and decentralized energy model –after the success of domestic self-consumption–, and that manufacturers reduce both plastic and packaging. And it is necessary to curb urban pollution -which generally exceeds the WHO levels-; In other words, the right to breathe clean air is guaranteed, and not only in future low-emission urban areas. Elaborated by: Antonio Cerrillo
Twenty-four men have murdered twenty-four women this year. This is data from July 4. The subject of the sentence is murderous men, an express change of focus that the Ministry of Equality has made to underline that it is machismo that kills. It is clear that gender-based violence cannot be ended in this way, but this is a fight in which progress can only be made if it is pushed as a whole.
The Government has launched the state strategy to combat sexist violence (2022-25), crisis committees are being developed to analyze after each crime if the woman had had any contact with the Administration to correct errors. Likewise, work is being done so that public services – health and social centers – are proactive in detecting women at risk without the need for a complaint. The focus has been placed on the functioning of justice and among the various fronts, the debate on the reform of the Gender Violence Law has been opened.
But this is not a sectoral policy, it requires a forceful State commitment that is sorely lacking. Looking back, there have been fewer murders than in the first decade of the 2000s. But there are still plenty. Prepared by: Cristina Sen.
