MADRID, Spain – Opposition leader and Popular Party president Alberto Núñez Feijóo intervened on Saturday at the La Toja Forum, where he challenged Pedro Sánchez to call general elections immediately following Friday’s setback over the housing decrees and to stop feinting. Feijóo took part in the closing conference of the La Toja Forum, where he referred to the blow suffered by the government in Congress on Friday when it rejected its twin housing decree.
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The PP leader said housing is the symbol of the current government’s failure under Pedro Sánchez, who he said lies and does business with confrontation between Spaniards. In his speech, Feijóo insisted on calling for general elections, saying that if elected his only goal is to improve the real lives of Spaniards, joking that he has already turned 65 and has no career to build or future to seek but rather to give back lost time to citizens after the last two legislatures. According to Feijóo, Pedro Sánchez should not feint any more about calling elections but should do so, because Spain has the right to decide now, denouncing his attempt to keep the streets on edge and encourage chaos. He said only one way out remains: that citizens have their say as soon as possible, adding that Sánchez should stop feinting about calling Spaniards to the polls and should just do it, because Spain has the right to decide now.
According to Feijóo, Spain has the right to decide now between those who have colonised and corrupted institutions and those with a project to regenerate them and return them to the service of citizens, between those who have normalised scandal and confrontation and those who will begin a democratic normalisation of the country. He added that they want to cover up with aggression against the opposition their incompetence of eight years in government, before saying Spain does not deserve a government that seeks to profit from confrontation between Spaniards.
For Feijóo, Spain currently lacks minimal democratic hygiene, with no new budgets, governed by decree, and with decisions such as the rejected housing decree-laws that are a political manoeuvre. In his view, Sánchez’s aim has been to divide the country, confront it, corrupt it, isolate it internationally and neutralise any mechanism of control, and to that end he said all democratic rules have been perverted and institutions placed at the service of a personal project. Feijóo recalled that citizens will have to choose between those who have abandoned the territorial integrity of the country to its fate, as in the case of Ceuta, and those who want to restore dignity, calm and normality, because no electoral manoeuvre will make them forget that part of Spain remains occupied more than two months later. If in eight years they do not manage to solve people’s real problems, how dare they ask for more time and how dare they point at the opposition, he asked.
He added that he is not calling elections out of revenge but because the country can take no more, for all the problems that have not been solved but also for all the problems that have been created and did not exist in 2018. The politician from Ourense added that Spain must be able to give itself at last the opportunity for change, to end eight years of decadence and deterioration and to tear down the wall that separates Spaniards, saying he cannot promise a world without disorder but can promise to bring order to Spanish politics.
Deepening the housing debate, Feijóo said the housing market is broken and the government has had eight years of inaction, building fewer homes than any other government since 1981 and with a population increase of between four and five million, making it evident there would be a supply crisis that would obviously entail a price increase. Feijóo complained that the executive’s response to having sunk the housing market is to promote legal insecurity in the housing sector, threaten something akin to expropriation and introduce difficulties for vulnerable tenants, adding that populists always harm those they claim to want to benefit. For the PP president, the housing problem is not solved with two contradictory royal decrees, criticising that the executive’s strategy after the fall of these two texts is to cover up its eight years of incompetence with aggression against the opposition.
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The PP leader took the opportunity to explain that his party proposes a shock plan to cut taxes for under-35s, or under-40s if possible, by 60 per cent, adding that for a second home it would be transfer tax and for a first home VAT from 10 to 4 per cent. He also advocated a young savings account allowing those with savings capacity to deduct that saving in income tax, as well as 100 per cent guarantees on the price to complete bank requirements. As for tenants, he defended that they deserve clear rules and an abundant supply, both public and private, so prices genuinely fall. Regarding vulnerable people, he said they deserve help, protection and sufficient social housing at the state’s expense and not at citizens’, while owners deserve security. He also said Spain deserves a real plan to build one million homes and create 600,000 jobs at the same time, clarifying that he will present the housing plan to social partners, political parties and the sector and will accept all the submissions they put forward, committing to approve the proposal in the first month of government because it has been in the works for some time.
