The general secretary of Vox, José María Figaredo, has warned that if Pedro Sánchez remains in La Moncloa maintaining his current policies, the public pension system will end up being "irretrievable" and "there will come a point where pensions are unpayable."
In an interview on Antena 3, reported by Europa Press, he accused the president of the Government of "lying" by claiming that PP and Vox intend to deceive pensioners until November 29, the date of the elections. In Figaredo's opinion, since the Executive "cannot talk about its issues, they launch the lie against others, trying to incite fear."
After rejecting those accusations, he turned Sánchez's argument around and maintained that the real risk to pensions is the head of the Executive himself. According to him, if he continues in power with the same economic line, a scenario will be reached in which the retirement system will be "irretrievable" and the benefits "unpayable."
"It will be with Pedro Sánchez in a year or with Pedro Sánchez in three, but the reality is that, because they are emptying the pension fund, the Social Security fund has an ever-increasing deficit, which does not stop growing," he emphasized.
An increasingly indebted State
Figaredo has stressed that "the debt of Spain, as a State, which is who ultimately is financing the pensions, is growing every day." And he contrasted this data with the official discourse of the Government, which insists that the economy is going "wonderfully," when, according to him, "Spain is increasingly indebted."
After emphasizing that pensions are being paid by resorting to debt, he recalled that interest rates have remained very low for years, but warned that they have already started to rise. In his view, Pedro Sánchez's strategy of continuing to increase the debt makes the entire country "unviable" and puts "the entire economy, both pensions and the entire social system in general" at risk.
As an alternative, the Vox leader proposes a shift in the economic course so that Spain "returns to grow" and citizens can "return to save" and consume, especially fresh foods and olive oil, which are the products that are "falling the most." The goal, he said, is to "make the entire system viable, not just pensions, but also the State."
Housing and accusations of smoke screens
Regarding the housing problem, Figaredo has rejected the criticisms from Pedro Sánchez and Minister Félix Bolaños, who accuse them of wanting to divert attention from this issue with information about the real estate business of the PSOE spokesperson, Montse Mínguez.
In response, he maintains that "the smoke screens are not launched" from Vox, recalling that his party has been "bringing up" the housing debate for more than three years and denouncing that access to a house has become unaffordable in Spain. "It is they who have precisely tried to hide it," he stated.
When referring to the business of Montse Mínguez's boyfriend, he accused the socialists of being "hypocrites" because they want "for the people poverty, waiting lists, and unsafe and unlivable neighborhoods" as well as "miserable pensions."
Meanwhile, he added, they have a company that "is dedicated to living off housing," in addition to being able to send their children to private schools and resort to private healthcare.
Immigration, wages, and labor
When asked how they plan to build new homes if they criticize the arrival of immigrants, Figaredo avoided being specific and limited himself to stating that in Spain there is a 10 percent unemployment rate, which rises to 15 percent among non-EU nationals and reaches 25 percent in the case of people of African origin.
With these figures, he refutes the idea that "we need to bring in labor" from abroad, considering that in Spain "there is a lot of available labor." Furthermore, he warned that this foreign labor tends to accept worse conditions, which, in his opinion, contributes to wages remaining stagnant.
"If the Government's policy is going to be, as it has been for many years, to import waves of people from outside Spain, whose economic expectations are much lower, what happens is that instead of the supply and demand curve for labor growing and naturally driving wages up, what happens is that artificially a drop in wages is provoked," he argued.
In this line, he defends that wages should increase "naturally" and not by decree, and laments that "in Spain, net, real wages have been stagnant for 30 years."
For this reason, he reproaches Pedro Sánchez for limiting himself to boasting about the "macro" economic data, which reflects greater consumption and more capital movement, when, as he has pointed out, the "per capita is getting worse and worse."