The head of the opposition and president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, spoke this Saturday at the Toja Forum, where he challenged Pedro Sánchez to call general elections now after the setback suffered on Friday with the housing decrees, and not to threaten any further.
Feijóo participated in the final conference of the La Toja Forum, where he referred to the blow that the Government suffered on Friday in the Congress of Deputies, which rejected his double decree on housing.
The leader of the popular parties has assured that housing is the "symbol of failure" of the current Government of Pedro Sánchez, which "lies" and "does business with confrontation" between the Spaniards.
In his speech, Feijóo has insisted on calling for general elections, ensuring that if he is elected his "only goal" is to "really" improve the 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 the time lost" to citizens in these last two terms.
According to Feijóo, Pedro Sánchez should not "make more threats" by calling elections, but rather do them, because Spain has "the right to decide now", and has denounced his attempt to have "the street on edge" and encourage chaos.
"There is only one way out, for the citizens to speak as soon as possible. President Sánchez should not threaten to call the Spaniards to the polls anymore. He should do it. Spain has the right to decide now," the Galician politician highlighted.
According to Feijóo, Spain "has the right to decide between those who have colonized and corrupted the institutions or those who have a project to regenerate them and return them to the service of the citizens", between "those who have naturalized the scandal and the confrontation and those who are going to initiate a democratic normalization of the country."
"They want to aggressively cover up their incompetence during eight years of government against the opposition," added Feijóo, before stating that Spain does not deserve a government that intends to do business with the confrontation between Spaniards.
For Feijóo, Spain currently lacks a minimum of democratic hygiene, without new budgets, governed by decree, and with decisions such as the rejected decree laws on housing that are "a political maneuver."
In his opinion, Sánchez's objective has been to divide the country, confront it, corrupt it, isolate it internationally and neutralize any control mechanism. To this end, he has ensured that all democratic rules have been perverted and the institutions have been put at the service of a personal project.
Feijóo recalled that citizens are going to have to choose between "those who have abandoned the territorial integrity of our country to their fate, as in the case of Ceuta" or those who "want to return dignity, tranquility and normality, because no electoral maneuver will make us forget that a part of Spain is still occupied more than two months later."
"If in eight years they cannot solve the real problems of the people, how dare they ask for more time? How dare they point out the opposition?" he asked.
"I'm not asking for elections out of revenge, I'm asking for them because my country can't take it anymore, I'm asking for them 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," Feijóo added in La Toja.
The Orense politician added that Spain "must be able to once and for all give itself the opportunity for change, to put an end to eight years of decadence and deterioration" and to "tear down once and for all the wall that separates the Spaniards." "I cannot promise a world without disorder, but I can promise to bring order to Spanish politics," he declared.
Going deeper into the housing debate, Feijóo added that "the housing market is broken" and that the Government has been "inactive for eight years, building fewer homes than any other government since 1981" and "with a population increase of between four and five million." "It is evident that we were going to have a supply crisis and that would obviously lead to an increase in prices," he noted.
Feijóo complains that the Executive's response to having "sunk the housing market is to promote legal insecurity in the housing sector, threaten with something similar to expropriation" and "introduce difficulties for vulnerable tenants." "Populists always harm those who say they want to benefit," he added.
For the president of the PP, "the housing problem cannot be resolved with two contradictory royal decrees." In this sense, he criticized that the Executive's strategy, after the fall of these two texts, is to "cover, with aggressiveness against the opposition, its incompetence of eight years of Government."
What he proposes
The leader of the Popular Party took advantage of his intervention to explain that the PP proposes, in terms of housing, "a shock plan to reduce 60% of all taxes to those under 35 years of age, if possible to those under 40." "If it is a second home, transfer tax, if it is a first home, VAT, from 10 to 4," he added.
He also advocated for "a young savings account, where anyone who has the capacity to save has the possibility of deducting that savings from personal income tax," as well as "guarantees for 100% of the price to be able to complete the banking requirements." As for the tenants, he defended that "they deserve clear rules and an abundant offer, public and private, so that the price really drops."
Regarding vulnerable people, he assured that "they deserve help, protection and sufficient social housing at the expense of the State and not of citizens." The owners, Feijóo continued, deserve "security." Furthermore, he stated that Spain deserves "a real plan" to "build a million homes" and "simultaneously create 600,000 jobs."
