The exceptional results achieved by the popular Gonzalo Capellán on March 28 in La Rioja have allowed him to be sworn in as president with a moderate speech, free of concessions to the ultra-right, and faithful to the ideas he conveyed during the campaign. The new La Rioja president has used the 17 seats won by the PP, an absolute majority, to be invested with no more support than his fellow acronyms.
Capellán has been named the new president of La Rioja shortly before 3:00 p.m., after having defended throughout the morning the axes of the management that he promises and some pieces of his government program. The deputies of the PSOE (12), Podemos-IU (2) and Vox (2) have voted against his investiture.
The popular leader has indicated that he will dialogue with all the parliamentary forces and that he will provide "a moderate approach, with rationality and common sense as a standard", and with "technical management capacity as a fundamental pillar of good government. In addition, he has offered to the people of La Rioja "good management focused primarily on addressing their real problems, based on effort, maximum responsibility, institutional loyalty and the government's closeness to the citizenry".
Capellán (Haro, La Rioja, 1972) has said that La Rioja "has to shine as the land of opportunities that it can and should become", aspiring to "enjoy the highest levels of quality of life and social and emotional well-being". , he stressed.
The new president of La Rioja, likewise, has promised to adapt the structure and volume of his Government and public administration to the efficient provision of services to citizens; to eliminate the gift and inheritance tax between parents and children; to implant the university studies of Medicine in the community; and to promote teaching in Spanish as a foreign language.
Son of the mayor of Haro for 28 years, Gonzalo Capellán is a professor at the University of La Rioja, Minister of Education, Culture and Tourism of La Rioja between 2011 and 2014 and Minister of Education at the Embassy of Spain in the United Kingdom between 2014 and 2020. In his speech, Capellán has quoted Víctor Hugo, a writer that he is passionate about and for whom he has paraphrased that "all power is service".
"This is how I conceive it and this is how I declare it before this Chamber, this is how I learned it at home from a very young age: public service as the only inalienable basis for the good exercise of true politics", he stressed.
The outgoing president, the socialist Concha Andreu, has asked the president-elect to flee "fiscal populism" and has indicated that he receives "an objectively better community than four years ago."
Andreu has stressed that he receives a "stronger and more cohesive community, with more employment and growth and stronger public services". Likewise, he recalled that La Rioja "today has less unemployment and more affiliates to social security. And all, with a more stable hiring; before one in ten contracts was permanent, now there are four out of ten, more than 40% ”.
In addition, he said, "70,000 pensioners receive an average of 1,244 euros more per year, and the rise in the SMI benefits more than 25,000 La Riojans, sixty percent young women."
Andreu ended his speech by sending a message to the future president of the La Rioja Government, telling him that "in everything that involves defending the interests of La Rioja, the cohesion of Spain and improving the lives of its citizens, you can count on the PSOE of La Rioja".
