The president of the Government of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, has stated this Wednesday, November 11, that calling a general strike "with a personal interest" directly affects how citizens perceive trade union organizations and "is not going to help their credibility."
At a PP event in Huesca, in which the PP's general secretary, Miguel Tellado, also took part, the regional leader emphasized that "the strike cannot be confused with an electoral act," stressing that, in his view, the promoters are seeking "for Spain to be the world turned upside down, for there to be a strike against the opposition" and not against "who has had the responsibility of governing."
Azcón has also pointed out that "this strike, which is having an absolutely scarce follow-up, has much more to do with the fact that citizens understand that strikes do not have to have electoral motives, but economic or social ones."
In his opinion, "trade unions have been wrong in the article of the Constitution" that corresponds to them, recalling that the precept that refers to trade unions as social agents is Article 7, while Article 6 refers to political pluralism: "Trade unions have to be trade unions and, if they want to be political parties, they have to stand for election."
The Aragonese president has also reiterated that "a picket is not a political rally" and has warned that the central trade unions "are going to achieve the opposite effect" to the one they are pursuing, while also condemning "those acts that have been violent today."
"That there is a single act of violence during a general strike absolutely discredits the work of those who allow those violent acts to occur," Azcón has reiterated, defending that "the strike means that whoever does not want to go to work will not go to work, but that whoever wants to go to work has the possibility of going to work," and therefore he considers "it is absolutely condemnable" to obstruct attendance at the workplace.
Public housing and responsibility of governments
In housing matters, Azcón has said that "it is deceiving people" for trade union organizations to now argue that access to housing is a problem, not because it is not, but because, as he has assured, "they have been created by the years of socialist government in the Autonomous Community and in the Government of Spain". He has pointed out that, during the eight years of PSOE rule in Aragon, only 86 homes were built, while his Executive, in three years, is driving the promotion of 3,600.
For this reason, he has stressed that "if today the housing problem is a real problem and an existing problem, it has nothing to do with what the Government of Aragon is doing at present", but rather with the actions of the previous Executive, which, as he has said, built "practically no housing", to the extent that "the socialist governments in Aragon and that of Pedro Sánchez are going to go down in history for being the ones that built the least public housing in history".
He added that "a general strike is not going to build homes, is not going to improve people’s purchasing power, and is not going to lower the price of the shopping basket". In his view, what can help contribute to these goals is "changing the Government".
Along these lines, he concluded that "a general strike that is carried out so that the same Government continues, the one that has created these problems, is the opposite of what it wants and of what the Partido Popular is going to defend".