The adviser for Culture, Tourism and Sports, José Alberto Díaz Pico, has explained this Tuesday that the downturn in tourism in the Community is due to the "fear of the train," the reduction of available air routes, and the absence of new General State Budgets (PGE). In response to this thesis, the Socialist parliamentarian Sergio Iglesias has blamed this decline on Vox's "attitude" and its "indoctrination against tourism".
During the defense of an interpellation in the Plenary Session of the Cortes of Castilla y León, Iglesias emphasized that "the average spending per person in Castilla y León during the year 2025 was 208 euros, compared with 363 for the national average" and that overnight stays in rural accommodation "fell by close to 6 percent".
The PSOE parliamentarian also criticized the distribution of the budget of the Department and the latest controversies in cultural matters: "I have spoken about tourism and I have spoken about how its attitude, its way of being, and its indoctrination against tourism harm it."
Díaz Pico rejected these accusations about regional management and insisted that the central Government is "the worst enemy" of tourism in Castilla y León. In his view, "part of the travelers has stopped trusting the train" after recent accidents, and the reduction in air connections is a response to decisions regarding Aena's fees.
The adviser set the Junta's economic policy against the lack of new state accounts, noting that "the State has been without new budgets since 2023" and that in the latest allocation from the Ministry of Culture to the Community "almost six out of every ten euros stayed in Madrid".
Regarding the promotion measures, Díaz Pico has outlined the development of the Strategic Tourism Plan for Castilla y León 2027-2030, which will seek to raise average hotel stays to above two days and improve the average spending of tourists.
He has also justified replacing European sustainability funds with the Junta's own resources, in order to achieve "more freedom of action and less dependence on ideological constraints".
In response, Iglesias reproached that the Directorate General for Tourism has "barely 10.62 million euros in real investments" for next year, a figure he compared with that of single-province communities such as Asturias.
The socialist prosecutor has also denounced the bureaucratic difficulties faced by museum professionals and the lack of alignment with events and institutions such as the Hay Festival, the Seminci, or the sector of theatrical creation. Along these lines, he has concluded that "what you are really afraid of is that people might think, that people might educate themselves, that people might express themselves, and that people can freely listen and learn."