The president of the Government of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno, has chosen the Doñana National Park as the setting to say goodbye to the year with the traditional Christmas speech. Throughout 2023, the natural space has become the main point of confrontation between the Junta de Andalucía and the central government over the irrigation expansion law — which was also opposed by the European Commission, UNESCO, 25 scientific societies and 1,109 experts from around the world―, but the agreement reached between both administrations at the end of the year has allowed the popular leader to recover his more moderate profile and one prone to dialogue. That “spirit of Doñana” that Moreno has appealed to in recent weeks exemplifies what his people call the “Andalusian way” and he has expressly referred to it this afternoon in his last speech of the year. “The way of seeking common ground instead of division. I want Andalusia to be an example to follow, far from noise, scandal and insult”, he has defined it.
Moreno has put this Doñana pact as a model of the importance of reaching agreements in the political sphere. “You citizens deserve that we politicians make an effort to understand each other and what we have done in Doñana is a good example,” he said, to then offer it as a guideline to follow in his relationship with the Pedro Sánchez Executive. Here I extend my hand to the Government of Spain to face at least one other challenge throughout 2024,” in reference to the “demolition of Algarrobico.” “That building has become a symbol of wild urbanism on the Mediterranean coast and it is time to throw that concrete mass to the ground and return that joint space to the citizens and nature itself,” described the Andalusian president.
On other occasions, Moreno has urged the Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, to implement the agreement signed between both administrations in 2011 to demolish the hotel built in the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, by which the Government Central assumed the costs of the demolition and the Andalusian assumed the costs of restoring the area. This demolition is now subject to the Carboneras City Council processing the annulment of the construction license granted in 2003, according to the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia.
Moreno's defense of the positions of the farmers of the County of Huelva who had been illegally extracting water in Doñana called into question the green revolution of the Junta announced when it began its first term, to the point that the popular leader himself recognized that the regulation of irrigation regularization had worn him out politically. With the signing of the new plan for the Natural Park, which includes aid of up to 100,000 euros per hectare for strawberry farmers, Moreno and his government team have been able to recover that “Andalusian way” that their people defend: a moderate way of governing that they present as de-ideologized — “I want the best for Andalusia, above political acronyms and above any interest,” he noted this afternoon in his speech — but that does not prevent him from supporting the heavy-handed policy exercised by its national leader, Alberto Nüñez. -Feijóo in Madrid and raise the flag of grievance in matters such as regional financing or the transfer of powers.
The president of the Board alluded to this comparative grievance at the end of his speech: “I am going to defend Andalusia wherever it is necessary and before whomever it is necessary. The voice of Andalusia will sound loud and wherever it needs to sound, to prevent a Spain of privileges,” he stated. In recent months, Moreno has emphasized this defense of equality between territories after the agreements with independence and nationalist formations that have led to Sánchez's investiture, but five years ago, he already developed that same argument, even with similar phrases, in his first speech of this type offered from Cumbres de Enmedio, which at that time was the municipality with the fewest inhabitants in the community. “From Andalusia we are going to demand that the future be built as we did in the Transition, with the spirit of moderation and consensus that made democracy possible. “We will not tolerate any type of discrimination towards Andalusia,” he said in 2019.
Moreno has also used Doñana, whose biodiversity has experienced a worrying deterioration in recent years of its already diminished situation in the midst of one of the periods of lowest rainfall in the historical series, to warn about the drastic measures that must be adopted in the community if The drought does not abate and increasingly elusive rains do not return. After recalling his Government's investments in infrastructure, he was clear: “If it does not rain in spring, there will be no choice but to apply restrictions.”
What affects the most is what happens closest. So you don't miss anything, subscribe.
Subscribe
“In Andalusia, in general life is good”
The president of the Board has stated that Andalusia “is a land in which, in general, one lives well” and has defended that it has “good public services”, although “they can be improved”. Here he has focused on the problems that public health addresses that have led to the resignation this week of numbers two and three of the Ministry of Health, although with less self-criticism than he has done on other occasions. “There are people who are waiting to be seen by a doctor or a specialist. “I know,” he said, referring to the more than one million Andalusians who are on the waiting list – a historical fact -, to then ensure that “public health treats thousands of cases every day that cannot wait.”
Public education is another of the points on which the unions and the opposition focus their criticism of the Andalusian president's management. Moreno has insisted that he now “has more resources, investment and teachers than ever” and has highlighted how the Board's initiative to eliminate the use of cell phones in schools during school hours “has been imitated by various administrations, including the Government of Spain.” “Andalusia leads debates and initiatives in Spain, also in social policies and I like that,” he added.
As he does in all his Christmas speeches, the president of the Board has also had a reminder of the women victims of sexist violence, where Andalusia this year holds the sad record of being the community where the most women have died murdered by their partners. or ex-partners, 17 in total, the worst figure since 2011. “A scourge against which the entire Andalusian society has the obligation to rebel,” he pointed out, to highlight the recent approval of benefits for orphans of sexist violence, a measure with which Andalusia is on par with another dozen communities that already have aid of this type implemented.
The Andalusian leader has not forgotten to highlight the reduction in taxes, one of the axes of the economic policies of the autonomous governments of the PP and has also wanted to focus on another of the main international events that have put the community in the map: the celebration of the Latin Grammy gala for the first time outside the United States. “I want people to talk well and seriously about Andalusia,” said Moreno. Andalusia is becoming a pole of attraction for talent, technology and culture admired inside and outside Spain,” he assured.
This is the second year in which Moreno chooses New Year's Eve to offer his traditional Christmas speech, until 2023 it had always been delivered on the 30th. On this occasion the broadcast has been brought forward to the afternoon, within the news program of the public regional channel, Canal Sur. As on the other occasions since he became president of the Board, the popular leader has chosen a scenario that symbolizes his management or the axes of the policies that he intends to execute in the coming year. After Cumbres de Enmedio, Moreno offered his speech from an operating room at the Military Hospital – which his Government has recovered after decades of abandonment -; 2021 was in a hospitality establishment in Granada, in support of one of the sectors that had suffered the most from the pandemic and last year it was done from an oil cooperative in Jaén, one of the main economic sectors in the region affected by the Ukrainian war and drought.
#Moreno #asks #Government #Spain #pact #Doñana #demolition #Algarrobico