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De Andres says the PP will listen to Pradels with “good temper”, but insists on the need for change in Euskadi

The general secretary of the Basque PP, Javier de Andrés, has assured that he will go to meet the Lehendakari, Imanol Pradels, this Friday. ‘willingness to listen’, But defending the need for change in Euskadi because PNV and PSE-EE ‘cannot continue with the same policy that does not take us on the right path.’

In an interview with Radio Popular – Herri Iratia, collected by Europa Press, Javier de Andres mentioned the round of contacts that Lehendakari will begin this Thursday with all the parties that are represented in the Basque Parliament, except Vox.

The popular leader has said that he would have a ‘good disposition’ to listen and watch Imanol Pradels “What do you want to ask us?” and ‘what would you like us to believe’.

After highlighting that the PP wishes ‘to logically defend the ideas and project of the Popular Party.’ Of the 100,000 Basque people who voted for us in these regional elections’has said that they will ‘try to influence so that things go in the direction that we defended in the electoral campaign.’

‘We know that the PNV and the PSE have an absolute majority, but we will, to the extent we can, be able to support, or failing that, if we do not agree with what is being done, we will explain it’, he indicated, To indicate that we should give 100 days of confidence to the new government to look at ‘what they propose’, stressing that ‘change is needed in Euskadi because the approaches taken in recent years have led to a decline in public services and increased costs for families and workers’.

In addition, he highlights several sectors that ‘are not going well, they are going badly’, such as ‘housing, health, education and security’, so ‘this cannot continue’ They are doing the same thing that the PNV and PSOE governments have been doing until now.’ ‘A change is necessary and important and this is where we have to look at what the first months of the Basque government were like to see if they really believe they have to make some important decisions and not continue making the same policy because it does not take us on the right path,’ he warned.

In the specific case of health care and the compromise that Lehendakari is seeking, Javier de Andrés has stated that ‘public service, in this case health care, must be put ahead of any ideological objectives.’ In his opinion, ‘the problem with the Basque health service is that it prioritises the ideological objectives of the PNV over public service’ and ‘For example, this is why 50% of the Osakidetsa workforce has become temporary.’

He criticised PNV, saying ‘If we do not respond well to these professionals, they will move to other places.’ ‘Prioritises elements that do not guarantee health, such as Basque, over elements that are health-related.’

In that sense, he asked himself ‘how they are going to rapidly increase the Osakidetsa staff, as he has come to say, if it is not really possible to fill the positions that exist now’, and he stressed that it is ‘not a question of money’, but of ‘political will’ to ‘provide the best public health service possible’.

With regard to housing, he said that the problem in Euskadi is that there is an ‘attempt to facilitate the construction of housing’ and that ‘there is the weight of the ideological issue that, obviously, the construction of housing is a bad thing’.

Thus, he has criticized that ‘there are many burdens and difficulties for those who want to rent and those who want to build’, which means that ‘rent and construction supply will be lower’, which means ‘price increases’. For this reason, he has emphasized the need to ‘change the mentality’ and that if ‘there is a demand for 103,000 homes, we cannot build less than 3,000 per year.’

If we do not look at it this way, we will be tempted, or there will be people who will be tempted, to go against the law of the strong in the lawsuit, and see who is the one who believes that he will be able to solve the problem of going against the law of the strong in the demand.

In relation to the controversy over tourist apartments and stressed areas, Javier de Andrés has considered that the issue has ‘a socialist interpretation of the use of goods’ by which ‘the price is limited because it is expensive’, so that ‘by intervening in the market and setting prices, it discourages people from buying homes’ and this ’causes a price increase’. He reiterated, ‘Housing has absolutely been intervened in and the more you intervene the worse it will be, because you will discourage and lose interest in building, which is what is happening.’

Immigrant minors

Regarding Vox’s threat to break the autonomy agreement if the Popular Party accepts the distribution of unaccompanied foreign minors, Javier de Andrés has wondered what the formation of Santiago Abascal intends to do ‘if it is not a distribution throughout Spain, if minors are saturating the Canary Islands.’ ‘What do we want, that they stay in the Canary Islands and that the Canarian community accepts it?’, he asked Vox, believing that it is ‘absurd’.

In his opinion, we can ‘discuss how to redistribute in the rest of Spain’, but, as he stressed, ‘there is no point in having no redistribution.’ ‘What is happening, Vox thinks the Canary Islands are not Spain?’, he asked, considering that redistribution is ‘the natural thing’.

In his opinion, the problem is that ‘the Spanish government does not know how to stop the massive influx of immigrants, with certain risks and that these people are exploited by mafias, who transport people between Africa and Spain. This must be stopped at the source.’

Regarding the Popular Party’s request to use the armed forces to stop the arrival of immigrants, Javier de Andrés has been in favor of ‘stopping the mother ships if necessary’ and has reminded that ‘patrol boats are to protect the borders’.

In any case, he has stressed that ‘this problem needs to be solved at the source’ and that ‘do not think that it is the Canary Islands, once things get bad, that massive influxes of immigrants from here will have to be accepted constantly’.