Valencia (EFE) Spain with a series of immediate challenges and longer-term commitments.
Who is María José Catalá?
He has 16 years of political experience at a local, regional and national level:
Mayor of Torrent: at the age of 26, in 2007 she became mayoress of Torrent, the second largest city in the province of Valencia and until then a traditional socialist feud, which she revalidated four years later also by an absolute majority and where she remained until 2012, when passed to the Consell de la Generalitat. In between, she was a national deputy for six months (in 2008).
Minister of the Valencian Government: at the age of 30, in 2011 she was appointed Minister of Education and Employment in the Council of Alberto Fabra, who in the last year of the legislature also appointed her spokesperson for the Executive.
Deputy in Les Corts: since 2015, when the PP went into opposition, deputy in Les Corts, where she first served as deputy spokesperson for the popular group and since September 2021, trustee. This new legislature will combine her seat with the mayoralty, as Rita Barberá did before her.
Councilor in the Valencia City Council: she has been a councilor in the Valencian capital since 2019, when she ran for the first time as a candidate for mayor, and where in her second electoral attempt she has won the elections in all districts and has gathered 151,000 votes, 13 councilors of the 33 plenary.
Her first steps as mayor
Catalá has indicated that its first hundred days will be focused on:
Activate the reduction of taxes and municipal fees, so that it becomes effective on January 1st. His commitment is to reduce taxes by 67.8 million, with a 20% drop in IBI and a 95% bonus on capital gains from inheritances and transmissions.
A shock plan for cleaning and pruning the streets and parks of the city.
Start building public housing so that young people can emancipate themselves. Its goal is to build 1,032 public housing.
Remove oppositions to put 500 more police officers on the street.
Your commitments and your great challenge
Catalá has said that he wants this city to return to the “first division” and become the second city in Spain, ahead of Barcelona; will fight for the next Sailing America’s Cup to be held in Valencia; and will defend the creation of a City Council-Generalitat-Port Authority Society to manage La Marina and make it an innovative pole.
The northern expansion of the port of Valencia will be one of the ‘hot potatoes’ of his mandate, in which he aspires to reverse some mobility measures and suppress the tourist tax, and whose flagship project involves finishing the transformation of the old Turia riverbed and connect it with the sea, which requires the burying of the train tracks in Serrería.
And as successor to Rita Barberá, who held the mayoralty from 1991 to 2015, when Compromís came to govern in coalition with the PSPV-PSOE, she has promised that 2023 will not end without Barberá being named honorary mayor of the city and put your name to the Bridge of Flowers