The Minister of Youth, Begoña Gómez del Río, announced this afternoon in Parliament that the Cantabrian Executive plans to present in December the draft of the first Comprehensive Youth Plan of Cantabria.
The regional official made this announcement during an interpellation by the regionalist deputy, Javier López Estrada, who asked about the degree of development and the real implementation of the Government of Cantabria’s 2025 Youth Policy Law.
The PRC parliamentarian emphasized that the PP supported this law, promoted by the regionalists, which was created with the aim of launching policies that facilitate young people’s access to employment, housing, and the consolidation of their life project in Cantabria.
López Estrada requested to know what actions have been put into motion and with what economic and human resources, when ten months have elapsed since the regulation came into force. In this context, he called for information on the degree of progress of the Comprehensive Plan and on the establishment of the Youth Policy Council.
Gómez del Río explained that a participatory process has been initiated to design policies aimed at youth, in order to prevent the Plan from becoming a "mere formal instrument" and to achieve that it effectively responds to their demands.
She also detailed that this process began on February 25, in which the Administration, various public entities, economic agents, and youth associations, among other relevant actors, have been involved.
In parallel, work has been carried out in 14 sectoral technical tables, in charge of defining the main areas of interest for Cantabrian youth.
According to Gómez del Río, it is now necessary to analyze in depth all the contributions received. To this material will be added the conclusions of the "mega diagnosis" on youth commissioned from the Professional College of Political Science and Sociology of Cantabria, which was delivered at the beginning of September.
With all this information and once the Youth Policy Council is constituted, the Government will present the draft of the Comprehensive Plan.
Acquisition of properties and unaccompanied minors
At another point in the plenary session, the Vox Parliamentary Group questioned the Minister of Social Inclusion to clarify in which municipalities the Government has acquired properties for social purposes, what the amounts of each purchase have been, and what care-related use is given to each of those assets. Likewise, it asked to know with which entities agreements have been signed for their management.
Gómez del Río responded by linking these operations to the relocation of unaccompanied minors "imposed" by the Government of Spain. She pointed out that, although the regional Executive disagrees with this decision, it is addressing it "from institutional responsibility, guaranteeing the protection of the minors who must be attended to compulsorily and using public resources efficiently, strengthening the residential care network through small-scale resources".
She stressed that the Government of Cantabria has "rejected that project that existed to create a residential resource of 300 places and we continue implementing it with objective and rigorous criteria, both in the acquisition of properties and in the contracting with specialized entities. All this under the principles of legality, transparency, spending control and effective protection of children".
In this line, she reproached Vox for "making up resources by putting forward and ensuring that certain properties had been acquired without any legal, juridical or real basis".
For her part, the Vox spokesperson, Leticia Díaz, accused the councillor of maintaining a "deliberate obscurantism" by sheltering behind the "protection of minors" so as not to provide figures or precise data, which she criticized also do not appear in the Transparency Portal.