The second day of explanation of the budgets by the Valencian Government councilors began by recovering a certain calm after the clashes on Monday between the Vox councilors and the opposition deputies. The debate on the Health accounts for 2024 was applauded (by some and others) for the tone and the slow and argued explanation of data.
Even the deputies of PSPV and Compromís showed their satisfaction with a budget that they consider to be continuous and with hardly any changes in terms of the percentages allocated to the main programs. This consensus included the increase in staff for the centers that must be opened inherited from the Botànic and for the reversals of the health departments of Manises and Denia, which the previous Consell also left on track and which the new one has not modified despite the initial doubts.
An applause for his accounts that did not please the head of Health, Marciano Gómez, who described the comparison as “simplistic: it is like comparing a utility vehicle with a Ferrari” (although he said that he had no problems being the driver of the most modest car in both). Gómez insisted that “no type of model can be implemented in three months,” but he assured that his department has diagnosed the ills of Valencian healthcare and will try to solve them. Of course, not abruptly: “we want to revascularize the health system without having to amputate anything.”
Gómez highlighted the commitment of the new PP and Vox Government to Primary Care, which will have more than 700 million euros, and to Mental Health.
The debate was cut short in the area of Education. To demonstrate the insult that, without a microphone but perfectly audible, the minister of the branch, José Antonio Rovira, unleashed the Compromís deputy, Gerard Fullana, whom he described as a “scoundrel”; He had previously described him as a “professional defamer.”
This is how the head of Education responded to Fullana's criticism that he had linked Rovira and the Education spokesperson of the popular parliamentary group; Beatriz Gascó, with the Ciegsa case and the extra costs of more than 1,000 million in the construction of schools. “Assimilating me to a party colleague who has been investigated is as if I were saying that you, because you are from Mónica Oltra's party, are a child rapist,” he said.
Disqualifying aside, the Education debate made clear the lack of coincidence in this matter between the government and the opposition. Rovira used part of his intervention to denounce the lack of management of the Botànic - he pointed out that of the 1,639 million euros of the Edificant Plan, only 377 million have been executed (“not even a quarter”); He again denounced the “premeditated plan to boycott the beginning of the course”; and pointed out that in terms of employment, his department will invest in the private sector the few resources from the European Social Fund that the previous executive has left him to generate three times more employability than the public sector.
Rovira also confirmed, although without giving excessive details, that his Government is working to repeal the Multilingualism Law for the next academic year. The councilor defended that his department will support the new regulations that "will differentiate the different existing sociolinguistic realities, especially in the areas of predominance of each of the two co-official languages."
By the way, it drew a lot of attention that Compromís will not enter into the debate on one of the laws that were his hallmark during his eight years at the head of the Department of Education.
Already outside the commission, the councilor confirmed that the PP and Vox Government are studying removing the linguistic requirement to teach some FP specialties. The legal change that Education is working on aims to not require Valencian in those VET modules that can be taught without the need to have a university degree.
