The second vice president and minister of Tourism, Justice, Deregulation and Local Administration, Manuel Gavira, defended this Tuesday that the first budgets of the Andalusian Government of PP-A and Vox are "good" and "grow" in key areas such as health, housing, social services or justice, so that they will contribute to "improving" the situation of the autonomous community.
Manuel Gavira (Vox) opened the round of appearances by the ministers in the Parliament committees to explain the accounts of their departments. His Ministry of Tourism, Justice, Deregulation and Local Administration will have 1,087.1 million euros in 2027, 1.3 % more than in the current fiscal year.
The minister highlighted that the tourism area will have 118 million euros in 2027 and recalled that tourism "cannot be measured only by counting visitors, but one must also look at the employment it leaves, the opportunities it offers to small businesses, or the activity it generates inland when summer ends".
He also announced a new call for aid for Andalusian tourist municipalities and highlighted the 6.06 million euros allocated to improving beaches, facilitating their accessibility and advancing their environmental recovery.
In justice, the department will have almost 810 million euros, the "highest" figure in Andalusian history, according to Manuel Gavira, who warned that "putting more money does not always and by itself solve problems". He explained that the starting situation "is not simple" and recalled that the central Government approved the Law on Efficiency of the Public Justice Service, "imposed an enormous transformation and left the regions with the bill and the problems". "Now it is up to us from the ministry to stabilize the model, check how the courts of first instance are functioning and adapt the offices to the expansion of the judicial plant," he added.
"We will demand from the Government of Spain the corresponding means, as we are already doing, and at the same time we will fulfill our part," the minister said, who detailed that 440.8 million are set aside for justice personnel.
As for Local Administration, the program will have 84 million in 2027, of which 65.8 million will go to the Agricultural Employment Promotion Program (PFEA), the same amount as in 2026. Gavira pointed out that the Patrica allocation increases by 10 million compared to this year, while, as he recalled, the PSOE-A governments kept it "frozen" for years.
Debate on the Urda accident and criticisms of the central Government
The tragic railway accident in Urda (Toledo) also took up part of the commission. Manuel Gavira denounced that the "negligence" and "corruption" of the central Government "cost lives and, moreover, has an economic cost".
He pointed out that, according to the information known, the Executive "should have had ready since January" the safety system that could have prevented the tragedy in Urda. "What do you think Spaniards think when they read this? What they think is that their negligence costs lives," he said, addressing the PSOE-A deputies present in the chamber.
"What do you think Andalusians and Spaniards think when they read that Oscar Puente received four warnings of risk of human error before the Urda accident?", he also asked, alluding to the fact that this is the "policy, negligence and corruption" of the PSOE, whose "consequences are suffered by Andalusians and Spaniards; they suffer them in terms of loss of lives and shattered and broken families".
To those human losses are added, according to what he said, "economic consequences", such as the impact on tourism from the suspension of the high-speed line between Andalusia and Madrid. He referred to the "wave of cancellations" in the hotels of Seville after the railway accident and to the "uncertainty and the impact on the city's image".
"What do you want, poverty, ruin and misery in Andalusia?", he challenged the PSOE-A, advancing that he will meet this week with the tourism sector "to see what lines we can propose to help them". He added that with the PSOE Government, "to work at Renfe you have to be either a socialist friend or a full-blooded socialist".
The PSOE-A deputy Verónica Pérez expressed her group's regret over the Urda accident and stated that they are not going to enter "into any provocation, because possibly that would be the easy thing for whoever does not understand or for whoever does not have minimally human values, as some group has demonstrated here", alluding to Vox.
"Socialists are always on the side of people who suffer and we respect their pain so much that we are not going to enter into any political discourse because we believe that would be disrespecting those people who are right now in a moment of mourning. Decadence is precisely using others' pain to try to gain political advantage," she added, pointing out that "decadence perhaps is spreading hatred while a country is in mourning to put I don't know what before one's simply political interests".
Pérez responded thus to the previous intervention of the Vox deputy Ricardo López Olea, who held that "in the face of the evident abandonment of our people, it is not politicizing a tragedy, but rather it is a moral and ethical obligation not to remain silent", in the face of the central Government's "absolute opacity". "They are not going to make us be silent at any moment", López Olea said, for whom the "total abandonment of our trains perfectly describes this central Government, negligent, which has left Spaniards for many years to their fate and which is more occupied with easy tweets and its scandals than with attending to a people it has absolutely abandoned".
Clash of assessments over the Andalusian budgets
In the turn of the groups to assess the accounts, Verónica Pérez described the first budgets of the "government of betrayal" and of the "most reactionary and old-fashioned right" of recent history as a "genuine fiasco" for Andalusia. "They are the budgets that leave in the hands of those who deny gender violence the responsibility of protecting the victims of gender violence", she said.
"These are the budgets of the chainsaw, of cuts to public services in contrast to the squandering of the political structure of the Junta", the socialist deputy emphasized.
The parliamentarian of Adelante Andalucía Inmaculada Manzano criticized that in the budget "the growth of the tourism business is measured with such precision and it is not specified with the same rigor how those who bear its consequences are protected, because evidently tourism must be at the service of the cities and of those who inhabit them, and not the cities at the service and the greed of the tourism business". In matters of justice, she asked the councillor what resources will be allocated to the courts with the greatest overload.
The deputy of Por Andalucía Rafael Sánchez Rufo held that the allocation for tourism in 2027 is "a reduction in the total amount and moreover comes burdened by important problems in the execution of previous budgets". He added that to the town councils, "the first in the face", by leaving the Patrica "at 45 million euros, violating the law of unconditional financing".
On the part of the PP-A, deputy Manuel Cardeña replied to the socialist criticisms by assuring that the Junta does "comply" and presents budgets for next year, unlike Pedro Sánchez's Executive, which has not brought the General State Budget (PGE) to Congress in the last legislature. He also highlighted the "increase" in the justice items, which he attributed to a clear "political will".