CAMPAIGN EVENT IN BILBAO

MEP Javier Zarzalejos, participated last May 23 in a campaign event in Bilbao together with the former Prime Minister, José María Aznar, the president of the Basque PP, Carlos Iturgaiz, and the candidates for the Mayor of Bilbao and the Provincial Council, Esther Martínez and Raquel González. Zarzalejos wanted to emphasize that both are “two great candidates for the Bilbao City Council and the General Councils. They are showing that they know the problems and have proposals and drive to tackle them”. Inability to retain talent, fiscal pressure, demographic and social crisis, inability to attract investment, linguistic exclusion, advance of radical nationalism in the heat of the Frankenstein government are problems that the Basques cannot ignore no matter how much the PNV insists on its hegemonic discourse and that both candidates have alternatives to be able to address.

The former President of the Government stressed during his speech that “it is no coincidence, if it is not to reflect well, that the two most economically and socially important Communities in Spain for many years and decades, are the two Communities that have a more pronounced economic and social decline, such as Catalonia and the Basque Country. And these are the consequences of nationalist policies there and of nationalist policies here”. For this reason, he made special reference to the management of the PNV and its policies. He criticized, for example, that the Basques, in spite of having an instrument such as the Economic Agreement, pay more taxes than the people of Madrid.

Carlos Iturgaiz was also forceful in his criticism of the Basque Nationalist Party. The leader of the Basque PP made a harsh portrait of a “corrupt and clientelist” party that supports the Government of Sanchez and his laws “generating social alarm” in Madrid while managing Euskadi “as if it were a batzoki” and “as if the rest of us were for rent in this land”.