The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, has launched this Thursday an appeal for participation to win the general elections on next 29 November "and ensure that Spain continues to move forward".
"This is about Spain falling behind or making progress," he stressed, also warning that "a PP and Vox Government would mean a return of 50 years that the country cannot afford".
Planas made these statements to the media, accompanied by the PSOE general secretary for Málaga, Josele Aguilar, before a lunch-talk held in the Málaga municipality of La Viñuela, in which the mayor, José Juan Jiménez, also took part.
The head of Agriculture highlighted the achievements reached by Pedro Sánchez's Government in the last eight and a half years in the economic, social and civil liberties fields, as well as "the consolidation of a modern and European Spain". Against this project, he placed PP and Vox "as representatives of backsliding".
Along these lines, Planas assured that "progressive forces can win the elections and continue the transformation of the country". For this reason, he urged Socialist members to take their message "to the very last corner of Andalusia" with the aim of achieving "a clear victory on next 29 November".
New support measures for the countryside
Likewise, Planas has claimed the "commitment" of the Spanish Government to farmers, ranchers and the rural environment as a whole. He highlighted the new tax measures supporting the agricultural sector, which include reductions in the IRPF linked to agricultural diesel and fertilizers.
He pointed to the "effort" made by the Executive to "support the primary sector" and guaranteed that "it will continue working to strengthen agricultural activity and ensure the future of small municipalities".
In the same way, he recalled his direct involvement in achieving an associated aid from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) intended for raisins from the Axarquía. "When we were discussing the CAP, the Junta de Andalucía had not even agreed on the raisins yet and I did remember the need to protect this traditional crop, of great importance for the people of the area," he said.
For his part, Aguilar has denounced "the abandonment" of the Axarquía in the budgets of the Junta de Andalucía for 2027, especially with regard to public transport and support for the Important World Agricultural Heritage System (Sipam) of raisin grapes.
Aguilar has reproached that the Andalusian Executive, chaired by Juanma Moreno, "once again provides only 10,000 euros for this international recognition, exactly the same amount that it has left unexecuted this year."
In this regard, he has called on Moreno to "truly back this traditional crop, which represents an opportunity for agricultural, cultural and tourism development for the region."
He has also criticized that "the regional budgets forget the public transport needs of the municipalities in the interior of the Axarquía, whose residents end up paying triple what those in nearby localities integrated in the Transport Consortium pay." "We cannot have Andalusian citizens of the first and of the second," he concluded.