The president of the Government of the Principality, the socialist Adrián Barbón, has accused Vox of seeking to privatize the public pension system if it reaches power. During the plenary session of the General Board this Friday, Vox spokesperson Carolina López asked him whether, in her view, Asturias was in a position to withstand four more years of socialist policies.
"What Asturians, without a doubt, cannot tolerate is, for example, supporting a chauvinist force that denies the chauvinist violence that kills; what Asturians cannot support is those who want to privatize pensions, which affect 275,000 Asturians", Barbón replied to the Vox representative.
The socialist leader challenged López to make a wager about which party, PSOE or Vox, will win more support in the next general elections, arguing that it will be the citizens who judge their proposals.
Barbón responded forcefully to the personal references made by Vox, firmly rejecting any unlawful conduct. "I have never used drugs in my life. I have never used prostitution in my life. And I have never taken a bribe in my life", the regional president said, thereby denying the accusations launched by the party.
The head of the Asturian Executive reproached Vox for the lack of clear proposals on the matters that concern the public, especially regarding pensions and the minimum wage. "You have answered nothing, you have said nothing to the pensioners. 275,000 Asturians who know that they have everything to play for in the elections of 29 November because it is clear that you say that pensions are unsustainable", Barbón said, accusing Vox of seeking to "privatize" the pension system.
The president also turned to irony to question the consistency of Vox's regional deputies, including López, who run as candidates for the Congress of Deputies, emphasizing that they will stop receiving their salary from the General Board, a chamber whose abolition their own party is calling for.
In his intervention, Barbón has extended his criticism to the entirety of Vox’s ideology and has referred to López as "Carolina in the land of nightmares". "For you, everything that is more democracy, more rights, more equality between women and men, more freedoms, more opportunities, more jobs for everyone, more dignity at work, more access to housing, and defense of the welfare state is a nightmare," he has stated.
For her part, Vox spokesperson Carolina López has harshly attacked the Asturian president, whom she has accused of wasting public money on trips abroad while, as she has said, Asturias continues without receiving key investments. "Neither Asturias nor Spain can bear any more the sanchismo that you applaud," she has snapped at him.
López has assured that Barbón has earmarked 142,000 euros taken from Asturian coffers for trips to Mexico, Argentina, and Uruguay. "Only you and your four advisers spent 45,000 euros in ten days, which amounts to 7,500 euros each," she has detailed, equating that figure to several months’ salary for an average worker in the region.
The Vox deputy has also criticized Barbón for his remarks at a recent public event by Pedro Sánchez in Gijón, where the Asturian president defended the need for a progressive government in order to be able to negotiate major infrastructure projects for Asturias or to eliminate the toll on the Huerna. "Who the hell governed for the last eight years? My neighbor in the sixth? What did you negotiate? Nothing," López reproached him.
In addition, the Vox spokesperson has called into question the feminism claimed by Barbón and the PSOE. In her intervention, she referred to the killing of a woman in Gijón this Thursday and said that the alleged attacker has no Spanish origin.
"You go around as feminists, but what you are doing is importing machismo, and it is that we are funding it; they force us to finance it with our taxes, all Spaniards," López lamented, insisting on her criticisms of the policies of the Asturian Government.