The Galician opposition made it clear very soon that it will not grant the new president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, not just 100 days of grace, but even 100 minutes. The first test came with the ‘no’ to his investiture before the relevant session in Parliament was held. Beyond this refusal to listen to his proposals, the left has a clear desire to squeeze out any minimally controversial scenario, and in the imminent arrival of the King Emeritus they believe they have seen a gold mine.
This Wednesday, both BNG and a storm to make Alfonso Rueda’s words ugly, the day before, at Cope, where he described Don Juan Carlos’s visit to Sanxenxo this weekend as “magnificent news”, and highlighted “the benefit (.. .) from the point of view of tourism, influx and putting ourselves on the map».
“The fled King does not place Galicia on the map, who places Galicia on the map are the Galicians (…), who do not have B accounts in Switzerland and religiously pay their taxes,” charged Ana Pontón from La Coruña. The leader of the BNG considers “politically intolerable that the president of the Xunta says that the visit of the fled king to Galicia constitutes prestige and that he even puts Galicia on the map,” she insisted. “It is an offense to Galicians and discredits whoever pronounces these words,” she added. To clinch her: «He shows that Mr. Rueda is not up to Galicia. We do not need a fled King Emeritus to give prestige to our country.
Pontón took advantage of the situation to brand the Monarchy as an “obsolete institution that has no place in an advanced democracy”, and accused the PP and PSOE of “favoring the Emeritus”, in a “blatant attempt to whitewash the Monarchy (… .), full of shadows, discredited and leaking everywhere».
“Galicia, on the map, was not put by the Bourbons,” the secretary of organization of the PSdeG, José Manuel Lage, spoke in the same vein, from Santiago. Before the press, he blamed Rueda for an “important ignorance of history”, and added that he hopes that a president of the Xunta “does not embarrass us Galicians”. «On the map, Galicia is already placed hundreds of years ago. I would recommend Mr. Rueda some reading, starting with Alfonso X El Sabio and the Cantigas de Santa María », he influenced. «Domingo Fontán put us on the map».
Lage Tuñas elaborated that “the right perfectly shows its face” and said that for “many Spaniards”, the visit of Don Juan Carlos to Sanxenxo “is not a situation that fills us with pride and satisfaction”, but what “generates us it’s a feeling”-here he hesitated, searching for the best expression-“certainly a bitter feeling”; because the King father, he said, “with his practice he did not comply with that exemplary character that is expected of him.”
Returning to Rueda, he described as “worrying” that “in his first hours as president, his greatest contribution is to say that this man is going to put Galicia on the map.” “He has been there since before the distance of the Bourbons, and will continue after there are Bourbons in Spain,” he shot.
The president, asked about it, refuted that he used a “colloquial expression”, when talking about the visit of Don Juan Carlos putting Galicia “on the map”. «He comes to say that at this moment, from the point of view of influx (…), we are interested in talking about Galicia as a destination that many people can choose». “He said it was good news,” he insisted.
Rueda highlighted the colloquial nature of his words and accused the left of trying to “distort” his statements “for other reasons and for other reasons that are not relevant,” since “everyone understands” the meaning of his statements.
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