On Thursday afternoon, while Isabel Díaz Ayuso introduced David Bisbal in Puerta del Sol shouting “how are the machines?”, the plenary session of the Assembly had been hosting the budget debate for more than nine hours. Despite the relevance of the day, the president of the Community did not visit the regional Chamber all day. A gesture that reflects the parliamentary comfort that the comfortable majority of his party gives him, and, incidentally, his lack of interest in reaching agreements with opposition groups.
This Friday, with Ayuso present in the plenary session, the president saw how her third budgets were approved. The opposition has criticized the “parliamentary roll” of the PP that has rejected most of the proposals of Más Madrid, PSOE and Vox. Only twenty of the more than 3,000 amendments presented by these parties have remained alive.
The accounts for 2025 will amount to 28,662 million euros, 4% more than those in force, according to the announcements of the regional Executive. For the president’s team, these figures represent a “historical record” of spending in portfolios such as Health, Education, Housing, Social Policies and Transportation. In line with the president’s strategic bets, the popular parliamentary group boasts that next year “support” will be given to “the expansion works on Metro lines 5 and 11, the City of Justice or the new City of Health”.
For Más Madrid, these accounts are “unfair and insufficient to address the housing, public services and climate crisis,” according to its spokesperson Manuela Bergerot. For their part, the socialists maintain that these budgets serve to delve into the “ultraliberal model” that the Ayuso Executive has deployed in the Community, according to deputy Fernando Fernández. The president has a different vision, who defends that this project gives “stability, confidence” and “certainty to the Community of Madrid and Spain.”
Opposition criticism
In the parliamentary debate, the socialist Fernández has assured that these accounts are full of “black spots.” He cited, among other issues, stability in employment, housing or health investment. “The Health budget increases by 2%, when the general budget increases by 4%,” he replied. The PSOE-M maintains that these accounts “place Madrid once again in last place in health investment per inhabitant.” For its part, Ayuso’s team defends that the investment in this item has increased by 294 million euros. They are not incompatible data.
With the end of the year marked by protests from the educational community, and a new demonstration at the door of the Assembly due to the economic suffocation of Madrid’s public universities, the PP boasts of increasing the injection into education by more than 290 million. Its star measure consists of including the first courses of Secondary Education in schools, despite the fact that this decision violates the provisions of Royal Decree 132/2010, of February 12, which establishes the conditions that Secondary educational centers must meet. .
In the debate of the Assembly, the representative of Más Madrid María Pastor has taken a tour of the rectifications that the Ministry of Education has made this year. Among them, he highlighted the renunciation of his attempt to include a European school in Ramiro de Maeztu, the postponement of the stabilization processes to avoid changes in the employment situation of thousands of workers with the course started and the ratification of the agreement with the Government central to incorporate a thousand university professors, despite attempts to block that signature.
Amendment rejected by the Assembly’s legal team
The absolute majority of the popular party – with 69 deputies out of 131 – guarantees the approval of the Madrid accounts, but also the ratification of two laws. The first, with the name “measures to improve public management at the local and regional level of the Community of Madrid”, includes an article with which the popular party intends to prevent the headquarters of the regional Government, the General Directorate of Security, from Franco’s regime, be recognized as a space of Democratic Memory. This amendment has gone ahead despite the rejection of the Assembly’s legal team, which maintained that this proposal lacked coherence with the text of the law, according to elDiario.es.
In addition to the cover amendment to silence the memory of police repression during the dictatorship in which the regional Government is now located, the Law on measures to improve management at the local and regional level of the Community of Madrid is, In practice, a legislative broom car that establishes—in addition to other legal modifications on local administration, public service, transparency or digital administration—the suppression of the Youth Council, an organization that brought together about forty social, student, and religious associations. and sections youth from political parties and unions. The popular parliamentary group announced in October a “renewal” of this, but what it actually proposed was to dissolve it and instruct the Ayuso Executive to create within a year a collegiate, advisory and participation body, “that reflects the plurality of Madrid youth.” The new body will not have its own legal personality and will be in the organizational chart of the Ministry of Family, Youth and Social Affairs.
The PP had been struggling with the youth council for some time. He had already eliminated it in 2010, when the president of the Community was Esperanza Aguirre, but he recovered it during the time of Cristina Cifuentes, forced by parliamentary arithmetic. Más Madrid had denounced the withdrawal of funding to the organization last year, and understands that the PP considers it uncomfortable because it silences opinions that are bothersome to the regional Executive, such as those that concern the growing difficulties of access to housing for young people. Deputy Juan Varela-Portas has defended that this measure is “authoritarian in nature.”
Fourth omnibus law
This legislative container is not, on the other hand, the only one that is approved for races in the pre-Christmas process. Another omnibus law—the fourth of the Ayuso era—called “measures for balanced development in matters of the environment and territorial planning,” contains a profusion of legislative changes that the Government justifies by simplifying regulations and saving procedures, but that the opposition and environmental associations see as a pretext to eliminate controls and lower environmental requirements.
“You criticize Sánchez, you say that he governs with a lot of decree-law, but you are doing the same with the omnibus law,” Vox deputy Íñigo Enríquez de Luna replied to the popular people, who has defended that they would only have to appeal to this model in cases of “urgent legislative need.”
For the socialist Javier Guardiola “all omnibus laws have had a common denominator: the reduction of environmental protections.” In his address to the popular people, he assured that they “understand environmental protection as a blockage of economic activity.”
The alterations cover a large part of the autonomous legislative history, from the water law of 1984 to the animal protection law of 2016 – the possibility of amputating ears and tails of dogs is recovered, ferrets are regulated as hunting animals – with special attention. in land regulations and territorial planning, an area where legal changes have been constant for more than two decades. Environment and infrastructure – the Canal de Isabel II will not have to request a municipal license for works “of general interest” – are also not immune to changes. The figure of territorial plans stands out, which will allow actions prohibited by municipal planning to be authorized, or the construction of housing on land considered endowment, an extreme that was previously only allowed for publicly owned social housing.
The opposition has also criticized the reinforced powers for the Minister of the Environment, Agriculture and the Interior – “plenipotentiary viceroy”, in the expression of the Más Madrid deputy Alejandro Sánchez – who is attributed the ability to decide when or not to carry out the environmental evaluation regarding of some projects that affect the Natura 2000 Network, wetlands or protected spaces.
#Ayuso #ends #year #roller #close #Youth #Council #rejecting #oppositions #proposals
