The PRC deputy and former counselor of Rural Development, Guillermo Blanco, has responded this Friday to the latest statements by the deputy of the Popular Party (PP), Belén Ceballos, regarding the management of the agrarian crisis of 2022, and has stated that that year the regional government allocated 12.7 million euros in extraordinary aid to the primary sector.
In statements to the media, Blanco has accused the 'popular' parliamentarian of doing politics based on "rewriting history" and has "debunked" her arguments with "official" data, in order to demonstrate that the Cantabrian productive fabric received "massive" economic support compared to the 2 million euros claimed by the PP. "Politics has become the greatest discrediting of society: it only matters to discredit the opponent and lie without shame," he pointed out.
The regionalist leader has detailed this extraordinary package, specifying that 3 million euros were allocated to milk producers; 1.2 million to beef cattle; an additional 2.6 million to farms located in areas with natural limitations; 3.7 million for animal welfare and 2.2 million extra to mitigate the effects of drought. To these amounts, he added more than one million euros directed to fishermen to compensate for the increase in the cost of diesel.
He also recalled that, through the public company SODERCAN, an additional 11.8 million euros were approved for self-employed workers and manufacturing companies, including canneries and cheese factories, aid that, he emphasized, was paid in a "record time" of 2 months and 9 days.
"This is the true picture and not the one they want to present," Blanco lamented, who has claimed the work of the regionalists to support the primary sector "in the worst moments," compared to the "insufficient" three million euros that, he said, the Government of Cantabria is now going to allocate "and we do not know when they will reach the professionals in the sector."
Likewise, he took the opportunity to "uncover other lies" of the Popular Party. In this regard, he criticized the narrative of the 'popular' regarding the current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the period 2023-2027, which they describe as "very bad" despite being based on a framework partially designed by the previous regional government together with Galicia, Asturias, and the Basque Country.
Blanco has indicated that, while other autonomous communities introduced changes in December 2023 and in the spring of 2024, Cantabria was the only one that did not modify anything when the PP took over the Government, so the current CAP is, in fact, the one they "have allowed."
At the same time, he has denounced that the current Cantabrian Executive has left "tens of millions of euros" in subsidies unprocessed during this legislature.
In the face of that situation, Blanco has emphasized that the PRC "paid all the aids on time and in form" and has come to the defense of the civil service, rejecting "the PP's attempts to blame them" for the delays in the calls: "The civil servants comply; what fails here is the political management," he concluded.