The PP spokesperson in the Juntas Generales of Gipuzkoa, Mikel Lezama, has said that his party does not close the door to supporting the regional budgets for 2027, although he has emphasized that PNV and PSE chose Elkarrekin Podemos "freely and in an absolutely lawful manner" as a "travel companion", both in the accounts and in the tax reform, a reform which, he said, the jeltzale formation now "wants to correct".
After the first meeting in the round of contacts with the regional Government to negotiate the 2027 accounts, Lezama reiterated the PP’s willingness to "cooperate and try to improve some budgets that are not ours, not the ones we would make". "From the humility of being three board members, we want to contribute and try to turn, as far as possible, the average towards what we believe is most important", he said.
He has advanced that his group is going to "place a lot of emphasis" on some accounts that "year after year are records; this year we have a budget of 1,400 million with the same tax base". In his view, in Gipuzkoa "many small and medium-sized businesses close" and "neither do multinational companies come here daily or annually", while the population remains stable and "yet revenue continues to be more and more and more". For that reason, he asked: "How far can we go with record collections? what does that then reflect in day-to-day life?".
Along these lines, he warned that "the middle class is increasingly more punished, life has risen a lot" and yet "then we see that in the services they provide us in any field, I’m not going to say badly either, but that they remain simply the same, that there is continuity with some record budgets". In his opinion, "something will have to be done too, some reflection will have to be made, because it is not always possible to keep collecting more in order to maintain what we have".
Regarding the tax reform, Lezama criticized that the PP was left "several amendments out due to a legal interpretation, and one of them was the one on tax indexation, which is the one that can help the most or alleviate the most the middle classes of Gipuzkoa". In this context, he advanced that "we will place a lot of focus on the responsibility of this governing team, to see what positive impact it has on society, that increase of 137 million".
PNV’s support and shift on tax reform
The popular representative has emphasized that his group enabled, with one of its votes, the investiture of Eider Mendoza as general deputy and that, in addition, in the second year of the legislature it supported the budgets, so, as he has pointed out, “once again we could give it to them.”
Nevertheless, he has reminded that “in recent years, both the PNV and the PSE have preferred to choose, freely and in an absolutely lawful manner, Podemos as a traveling companion, not only in the budgets, but also in a tax reform.” He added that “they boasted of an optimal tax reform for the next ten years, together with Podemos,” but now “we see how the PNV itself wants to correct course by proposing measures very similar to the ones they rejected of ours, a year ago.”
According to the PP, “they are trying to make a 180-degree turn,” and, for that reason, Lezama considers that “they can’t be lurching around because the society of Gipuzkoa doesn’t deserve it.” He reiterated that it was “an incorrect tax reform” and questioned that, a year later, “taking just a path directly opposite, I don’t know to what extent it benefits them and gives credibility to the institutions.”