The PSOE from Alto Aragón maintains that the initiative announced by the Government of Aragón and the Huesca Provincial Council to implement fire prevention rings around urban centers "comes too late and the budget allocation is totally insufficient to address the large number of towns that have a real fire risk."
The socialist deputy in the Cortes of Aragón and spokesperson in the Agriculture Commission, Marcel Iglesias, lamented that the PP in the institutions "only acts when disasters happen."
He recalled that "we have had a summer of wildfires that have particularly devastated the province of Huesca so far, with more than 26,000 hectares burned, and now they publish an agreement without consulting the territory and totally undefined," emphasizing that the document is presented without a clear development.
According to Iglesias, "this announcement comes too late, and also without developing a serious economic proposal," reproaching that the PP-VOX Executive prioritizes allocations for propaganda over prevention. In his opinion, "there is something more than a million euros for far-right media per year, an amount greater than what is allocated to perimeter towns in the province of Huesca."
He stressed that the province of Huesca has more than 800 inhabited centers and that, "with 900,000 euros per year, how many towns are covered per year? If it is two each year, it would take 400 years to reach the entire province. The announcement comes without saying how, where, or who is going to manage this. Once again, only announcements and a joke."
The PSOE demands clarification of the criteria that will be applied to deploy this agreement. Iglesias has emphasized that "it is necessary to talk with the territory, with the mayors of all the municipalities, to know the reality of the province of Huesca."
The deputy added: "We want to know which towns will be started with, we demand from the Government of Aragón and the Huesca Provincial Council more transparency, more seriousness, and less opportunism."
Marcel Iglesias has recalled that, since the beginning of the legislature, these safety rings have been promised and that, more than 4 months ago, the governments of Azcón and Isaac Claver already disseminated a protocol to execute fire prevention rings. However, he has denounced that "they have been saying for three years that they are going to make those safety perimeters, and not only have they done nothing, but now, after two months of forest fires in the province of Huesca, they are announcing an agreement that comes late and poorly."
He has insisted that "of course it is necessary to perimeter the population centers as a preventive measure, but what we criticize is the intolerable attitude of the PP."
In this sense, he has described as a mockery to the neighbors who have suffered the recent fires the fact of "announcing something that they had already announced and that they have not done, precisely now, seems to us a mockery to all the neighbors who have suffered the consequences of the forest fires in the province, such as in La Litera at the end of June, the one in Monegros in July, or the last one which has been the worst remembered, from Las Peñas de Riglos that affected Hoya de Huesca and Jacetania, among other fires that have occurred in practically all the Huesca regions."
Iglesias has concluded by demanding immediate action: "What Claver and Azcón have to do is get to work on the fire perimeters now, and stop announcing, as they have been in government for three years and the only thing Claver and Azcón have done is sign an insufficient protocol to protect our towns from fire."