The European MP and Podemos candidate in the general elections of 29 November, Irene Montero, has proposed reducing the legal retirement age to 63 years, together with an increase in minimum and non-contributory pensions. At the same time, she has underlined that the public pension system “is perfectly prepared”.
Montero has expressed herself in these terms during her appearance at Europa Press’s informative breakfasts, where she has asserted the public nature of the pension system against the theses of the “motosierra of (Javier) Milei” that, in her view, the right is defending in relation to possible cuts.
The Podemos leader has criticized that the “privatization” of pensions has become “a consensus” between the PP and the PSOE in recent years. In addition, she has warned that pressure from the United States (USA) and NATO for the countries of the European Union to increase military spending “is fundamentally going to come out of healthcare and pensions”.
For this reason, the candidate has called for “protecting pensions”, has rejected models based on the so-called “Austrian backpack”, and has criticized that Vox leader Santiago Abascal avoids specifying his proposals in this area, despite the fact that, as she has pointed out, the public can intuit what they will be.
“You’re going to apply the chainsaw,” Montero snapped at Abascal, to emphasize that in the face of these policies “one of the great priorities” must be “putting an end to privatization” because “pensions are a public right” and not “a business” or an “individual responsibility”.
Labour and economic proposals to redistribute wealth
In the labour sphere, Montero has proposed raising the interprofessional minimum wage to 1,800 euros per month and cutting the working day to 30 hours per week, arguing that technological advances must serve to distribute work more fairly and guarantee more free time for the population.
She has also defended banning the purchase of homes for speculative purposes, allowing them to be acquired only when they are destined for habitual residence, and adding to the social rental stock the homes accumulated by investment funds.
On the other hand, he has described as “inconceivable” that the majority of the population in Spain “literally lives to pay bills” because “all the salary is taken by companies that are doing business” with basic rights. In this line, he has reiterated that money “does not disappear” at the end of the month, but ends up in the hands of the large companies, which he has highlighted “had never before accumulated so many benefits.”
Accordingly, Montero has maintained that the political proposal of Podemos is that money stops being “concentrated” in the upper part of society and that it is to rein in the escalation of prices, given that the increase in the cost of living is devouring “the meager social advances” achieved so far.
“Money has to go down. From above to families,” the “purple” leader emphasized, who has argued that it is a “deeply constitutional” proposal based on article 128 of the Spanish Constitution, which establishes “with unequivocal and crystal-clear clarity” that “all the wealth of the country, whatever its ownership, is at the service of the general interest.”
“That article is not being complied with in Spain at this time. On the contrary, what we are seeing is a major theft, a looting of the wealth produced by workers,” he has reiterated, criticizing that the current governments “lack credibility” because they fail “to redistribute wealth.”