The deputy secretary for Economy and Sustainable Development of the Partido Popular, Alberto Nadal, has said this Monday in Logroño that "if citizens give us their confidence to govern on the 29th, the General State Budgets 2027 will be presented in the first quarter of the year, and those of 2028, in time and in due form before September 30 as the Constitution commands".
Nadal has traveled today to the Rioja capital, where he has toured the facilities of the company "Circular Universe" and has held a meeting with representatives of the Federation of Business Enterprises of La Rioja (FER) and with Deans of different Professional Colleges in the community. Subsequently, he took questions from the media accompanied by PP candidates for the Congress for La Rioja, Alberto Galiana and Jesús Ángel Garrido.
In response to questions raised by journalists, the 'popular' economic leader has stressed that "the lack of PGE, in addition to the failure to comply with a constitutional mandate that the PSOE has skipped, not only without approving them, but without even submitting them in four years," entails "consequences in all areas of economic life". First, he pointed out, "because they determine the revenues of town councils and autonomous communities, which have received late and poorly what their revenues are and also have not been able to budget, and therefore their own policies".
He added, moreover, that "the investment annex of the PGE has disappeared, it has no value and therefore you cannot track what investments are being made in the country," citing as an example that "in La Rioja, many of the investments promised for years have never been carried out".
He described as especially concerning that "not having the General State Budgets implies that, every year, pensioners and public employees have to wait to see what botch the Government makes, because without budgets, they can see what increase they will get".
A decision, he has recalled, that must be ratified afterwards in the Cortes Generales: "which, by the way, has always been facilitated by the PP, despite the fact that in that Decree-Law all kinds of things were often put in," with the aim that "pensioners could pay faithfully their pensions and their increase from the start".
He has continued by pointing out that "the consequence of not having PGE means that you cannot reorient public spending toward the priority policies you have at any given time". Something that, Nadal has censured, the Executive has carried out "through two tortuous routes: the first, through European funds, which they have used and changed as they wanted".
"For the only thing that European funds have served, because it has not transformed the Spanish economy; it has not changed our productive model; and it has not allowed a jump in productivity—in fact, productivity is now lower than what we had in 2019. But yes, they have served so that Pedro Sánchez was in Moncloa without PGE," he has assured.
He has linked this criticism to the fact that "by continuously extending the Law on the General State Budget for 2023", the "extraordinary powers" that Parliament granted to the president of the Government to shift budget items between Ministries because of the COVID crisis have been preserved, "which is more than doubtful in terms of constitutionality and, in any case, it is stealing from Parliament the capacity to control the Executive over the money of all Spaniards".
As an alternative, he has reiterated that "if citizens give us the confidence for the Partido Popular to govern and Alberto Núñez Feijóo is president of the Government, we will submit some PGE for the year 2027 in the first quarter, and some PGE for the year 2028 that will be submitted on time and in due form, before September 30 of next year, as the Constitution requires".
"And in those General State Budgets will be the investment priorities, the pensions, the public salaries, the regional and local funding. That is to say, it will be everything that the general State accounts contain and that we have been without for 4 years in this country," he has stressed.
Economic policy "to improve the standard of living"
During his appearance, Alberto Nadal has insisted that "the objective of the economic policy of any governing party has to be to increase the standard of living of Spaniards, so that families see that making ends meet costs less and less, that the salary makes it possible to access basic products without anxiety, and that, in the case of young people, they can access housing".
"But nothing could be further from what is being produced, no matter how much the Government of Pedro Sánchez boasts that the macroeconomic figures are good, that the Spanish economy is growing. The truth is that it is growing based on immigration and on public spending that is growing much faster, but what is growing in the economy—and that has translated into an increase in taxes and public debt," he said.
For the PP, in a scenario in which taxes and inflation "have mercilessly eroded the purchasing power of Spanish families," it is essential "to have an economic growth proposal based on productivity and for that you have to talk first about the need to invest in the country."
Because, in his view, "if we see the housing problem, the problem of lack of infrastructure, the problems of lack of maintenance of the rail network, or the problems of blackouts and lack of access in the electricity system, everything has the same root: the lack of investment during eight years of a Government that only thought about surviving the next day, about conducting its business, and about squandering money."
Nadal has argued that "in Spain, we have underinvested practically in everything," citing a deficit of 750,000 homes, shortcomings in infrastructure and in the electricity network. And he has emphasized that, despite "all the money they have had, all the increase in taxes, all the increase in debt, all the European funds, Spain is the last country in Europe in public investment."
He has also referred to the agri-food sector, "which is doing everything necessary" but to which "it is not defended as it should be," and which is seen "asphyxiating" and with "overregulation" that also extends to the industrial sphere. Vocational training, technology, and energy are, he added, "all factors in which the socialist Government has failed because again it has never thought about tomorrow, only about today."
As a counterbalance, he has explained that "the PP's recipe is to reduce taxes, especially for the middle classes and especially for families"; also for the productive fabric and the industrial sector; to accompany that tax cut with a "sensible" energy policy; to relaunch vocational training "with greater connection between the academic world and the world of work"; and to remove "unnecessary" regulations.
"Ultimately, an economic policy that encourages effort, work, that returns to families part of the loss caused by increased purchasing that they have had as a consequence of the rise in taxes, an economic policy that favors investment, growth and productivity. Because that is the only way to raise not only the SMI, which must be increased, but above all to raise the average wage so that all Spaniards live better," Nadal has concluded.