SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Sep. 12 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, defended this Monday the 50% discount on bus and tram transport by the central government, while the President of the Nationalist Group has reproached him for his “complicity” in the face of a “new outrage ” of the central Executive with the islands.
In response to a question from the Nationalist Group in the control session of Parliament, he stressed that the Canary Islands is the autonomous community “that receives the most per passenger” apart from the fact that commuter and medium-distance trains, subsidized at 100%, are only used by the 10% of users.
He has recognized that “it was fair” to claim free access for the archipelago because initially he had been left out of the discounts, but now the Canary Islands are the only community to which the discount on urban transport is taken up to 50%, in such a way that if they add all public transport, the subsidy in the Peninsula reaches 36% and in the Canary Islands 50%.
Torres has disfigured the Nationalist Group as a “government party” that use expressions such as “socialist assassination” or “betrayal” and has ironized that the betrayal was signing a road agreement in which the works not executed would be financed by the regional government .
He has also pointed out that the next task will be to extend this measure throughout 2023.
Pablo Rodríguez, president of the Nationalist Group, has indicated that compared to per capita investment “what matters to people is how much it will cost out of their pockets to take the bus” and understands that “it should not be easy to be able to justify the unjustifiable but he is getting used to it”, he snapped at Torres, whom he has also blamed for “said in the Chamber that it would be an offense if it did not reach 100%”.
Along these lines, the question has been asked “why a citizen of Mérida can travel to Badajoz with 100% and one from Arucas, to go to Maspalomas, the same distance, has to spend out of pocket”, with annual savings that can be of up to 1,300 euros.
He has indicated that no Canarian has benefited from free transportation and rejects that the Canarian president “applauds Sánchez’s decisions with his ears, he always justifies them.”
