READ THE CATALAN VERSION
One of the maxims of the Government of Pere Aragonès i Garcia is to work for an entire Catalonia and that means providing services to all municipalities, promoting territorial balance, to stop the depopulation of the smallest towns and guarantee equal opportunities for the people who want to live and work in the rural world.
Along these lines, the Generalitat of Catalonia has launched a series of actions such as the Statute of Rural Municipalities, the new system of mobile bank offices for municipalities that do not have a bank branch, and an economic incentive plan for health professionals. that they move to primary care centers that are difficult to cover, among others.
Currently, 75% of the Catalan population lives in 15% of the territory, in urban municipalities, while the remaining 25% occupy 85%.
The Statute of Rural Municipalities is an innovative and pioneering text, which the Government has worked on together with the local world, and a legal framework that aims to stop depopulation and achieve territorial balance. Among other incentives, the Government proposes tax deductions for transferring residence to a rural municipality or for purchasing or renting housing.
The Statute of Rural Municipalities defines for the first time what rural municipalities are, which is a consideration that all those municipalities with less than 2,000 inhabitants and are located in a rural region, that is, with a population density of less than 150 inhabitants. per square kilometer.
The Government will give financial incentives to health professionals who move to CAPs in rural areas. It is estimated that there are 73 primary care teams that are difficult to cover in Catalonia, one in five centres. Doctors will receive an annual increase of about 3,500 euros and male and female nurses, midwives and social workers, 2,000 euros. The plan will cost the Health Department 11.5 million euros annually.
Likewise, the Generalitat has enabled a system of mobile offices to provide bank offices for the 503 municipalities in Catalonia that do not have a bank branch. This is equivalent to bringing financial services to more than half of the municipalities of Catalonia.
This financial inclusion service will allow citizens to have access to the same operations that can be carried out in any bank branch: withdraw money from the ATM, make transfers, consult conditions, contract services, etc.
Another notable measure has been the opening of rural schools in small municipalities where they did not exist to fight against depopulation. They are centers with few children enrolled and this means that they are grouped by different ages and are not distributed by grades (as in an ordinary school). Along the same lines, Educació has also facilitated the opening of new rural "bressol schools" with the same objective of fighting against the loss of students. In total 101 "bressol schools" have been opened.
Drets socials will finance 330 new places in comprehensive care services in rural areas. These are facilities for older people that have differentiated spaces to offer services comparable to those of a day center and other complementary areas for workshops and outpatient and home services, depending on the needs of users and their families.
These services serve people over 65 years of age who live in rural areas. They are located mainly in regions with low demographic density, a high aging rate, a high percentage of small and dispersed municipalities, and with difficulties in obtaining services.
The "Rural Women" project aims to visualize and recognize the contributions that women have made to the rural world. The project is built thanks to the collaboration of city councils, regional councils, museums and women's entities. These entities are in charge of researching and documenting the lives of women with the aim of socially recognizing the contributions that have until now been invisible. Many of the dissemination actions will be directed at the younger population and educational centers.
In addition, the Government also provides aid for the contracting of cultural proposals to micro-towns (2.1 million); for the Arrelament program, which pursues population fixation, territorial equity and equal opportunities; for the Odisseu program, which offers university students paid internships in companies or institutions located in rural municipalities; for forest management (5.5 million) or for fishing activity (19 million).
Also in terms of youth employment, the financing of internship contracts for young, recently qualified fishermen is planned to promote generational change; and aid to promote self-employment of young people between 18 and 29 years old, where there is a specific item for those who live in micro-towns for an amount of about 750,000 euros, and from which around fifty young people have benefited.
