SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Nov. 17 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the PP of the Canary Islands, Manuel Domínguez, highlighted this Thursday that the approval of free transport by bus and tram in the Canary Islands in 2023 by the central government is an “electoralist” measure that could have been put into practice since September at the time who has claimed that the funds not invested in 2022 be allocated to direct aid to taxi drivers.
“Now, what Torres and Sánchez denied us, they will give us as alms from January, yes, in exchange for support from the Canary Islands Coalition to the Government of Pedro Sánchez. If they had listened to us, this would have been solved from September. We Canaries cannot continue to be treated as second-class citizens. While trains and suburban trains were subsidized from the beginning on the Peninsula, we were denied the bus subsidy,” said the popular president.
Domínguez understands that “then the total subsidy of buses and trams on the islands was as viable as it is now and, therefore, the Sánchez government has saved a cost that should now be passed on to at least two affected actors by measure”.
The Popular Party of the Canary Islands claims in a note “what corresponds by right to this land” and demands from the Government that “the money that should have come to pay for 100% of the buses and trams, and that they have been denying all this time give it now in the form of aid to the taxi sector”.
In his opinion, “nobody has thought about taxi drivers, nor has the impact of free public transport been assessed in a sector that has suffered and suffers like few others from the rise in prices of fuel and spare parts”.
On the other hand, the president of the popular recalls that given the refusal of the Government of Spain to apply the 100% subsidy on the islands, some Canarian administrations, in the case of the Cabildo de La Palma, decided to make their own funds available to achieve free of these services, “so it would be fair that of those amounts that the State stopped spending in the archipelago, when only the 50% subsidy was applied during these months, a percentage went to those corporations that took a step forward to compensate the discrimination to which we were subjected then”.
“THEY LIED TO US”
Domínguez hopes that the regional president Ángel Víctor Torres will support this initiative “although if he acts as on other occasions, he will have to wait for permission from Moncloa to defend, or not, the canaries.”
At the time, Torres pointed out in the regional Parliament that he would do everything possible so that the Canary Islands also enjoy a total subsidy, as in the rest of Spain and after Sánchez denied that request, “he used all kinds of pilgrim calculations to justify what was unjustifiable “.
“The Canarian president is silent because Sánchez, the only one to whom he answers, whatever he does, even if it is to despise and harm the Canaries, wants to please a third party in exchange for electoral agreements that Torres will probably find out about again through the media. of communication,” he said.
Along these lines, it indicates that “in the face of pressure from the Canary Islands and from some parties, the Government gave in to subsidize only 50% of the bus and tram vouchers, so both the Government of the Canary Islands and that of Spain said that it was more than enough, that with the subsidy for plane tickets they already had enough and that they couldn’t afford the total discount on the buses”.
Today, he continues, “we know that they lied to us, that they treated us like second-class citizens out of partisan interests, that it was possible and that even so, they vetoed our proposals just because they came from the Popular Party.”
Domínguez insists that the measure announced now and that he hopes Sánchez “complies with” has also been defended by the Popular Party and is even listed as an amendment to the General State Budget “in exactly the same terms as the amendment that was has admitted to the Canarian Coalition”.
