Alfonso Rueda will take advantage of a working lunch, this Friday, with the First Vice President of the Government, Nadia Calviño, to ‘squeeze’ the person in charge of Economic Affairs for the granting of Next Generation funds for the Galician industry. This Thursday, at a press conference after the Consello, the president of the Xunta has warned that Galicia “would react if there were no financing”, something that he has called “unfair”, for companies such as Stellantis and projects such as the textile fiber plant of Altri in Palas de Rei.
Rueda has said that he hopes that the Galician Calviño is “sensitive” and concedes that Galicia cannot be discriminated against. His confrontation with the number two of the central Executive will also serve as a contact in his eventual audience with Pedro Sánchez, with whom he will also address a matter in which he has not hidden his concern.
After recalling that the bulk of the 28,000 million euros of the industrial Perte remain unspent or allocated, and that here the Government reserves its control, leaving the autonomies out, he has insisted that the Altri project “must have financing from European funds’; the opposite “would have no logic.” “I hope there is no problem,” he remarked.
The Stellantis plant in Vigo has been another of the proper names that has come to light in the advance of the president on the issues -without a closed agenda, he has specified- that he will put on the table at lunch with Calviño, which will be followed by a conference joint press. Regarding the automotive giant, he has stressed that it is “essential” that it receive “European support”; “The same” as the Government is doing in “other places” in Spain, such as Catalonia. With antecedents, moreover, nothing flattering, because “we just saw in the first Perte how Stellantis was largely left out,” he warned.
Rueda will ask Calviño for “certainties” that “it will not be like that” from now on and Stellantis “will have support” from the Next Generation. As the autonomous president will do with all the “priority projects” for Galicia and that “need certainties as soon as possible.” The head of the Xunta wants to stop talking and take action. That way he will ‘squeeze’ Calviño, waiting for possible announcements that the first vice president -the third minister who comes to the Community this week- can bring under her arm.
Before the media, Rueda has elaborated that it makes “no sense” that Next Generation funds are being committed in other parts of the country, while “here we are followed without giving any specifics”, to the concern of workers, councils and companies that “want invest”, but require “complementary support”. See the case of Altri, for which the Xunta has already guaranteed – Alberto Núñez Feijóo was still president – all the support that the Portuguese firm needs; but subject to the Government channeling the relevant European funds.
The “problem”, he pointed out, is that “today” the “deadlines” continue to pass and the only thing that reaches San Caetano is “many uncertainties” about those funds that companies are waiting for. “We need to know how much the Government is going to dedicate” to this Perte bound for Galicia. In short, Rueda hopes that the meeting with Calviño will be “effective” and obtain “certainties”, and has insisted that he will not give up his efforts and will defend the Galician industry again “if in the end, I hope so, I will be received as soon as possible by the President of the Government.