Los Llanos de Aridane (La Palma) (EFE) , with a maximum endowment of 1,000 million euros, and a volcano law.
Feijóo has made this announcement after visiting the facilities of a banana packing company in Los Llanos and touring the areas destroyed by the eruption and the road works carried out by the Cabildo de La Palma, with the aim of seeing “the reality of things” in front of to “the news that they give us in Madrid”.
The leader of the popular has emphasized that a year and a half after the end of the volcanic eruption in Cumbre Vieja the Government “has not fulfilled the commitments made” with La Palma, and has criticized that the Cabildo has to take charge of the construction of a highway “without a euro from the Government of all”.
For this reason, one of the aspects of this comprehensive plan that has been announced is to guarantee state financing so that the council and municipalities can undertake works for roads or supplies, without having to resort to their own funds.
This plan also pursues the repair of 100% of all damaged infrastructure, the distribution of direct aid and tax incentives, a renewed plan for the expansion and improvement of hotel facilities, a promotional campaign for La Palma in Turespaña, aid for the development plantain consumption and also renew agricultural and irrigation equipment.
With the agricultural sector in particular, it has committed to receiving European funds until 2027 those affected by the eruption who intend to replenish their crops, settle compensation for losses and recover road, electrical and irrigation infrastructures.
Regarding the law on volcanoes promoted by the PP, Feijóo explained that what is sought is that if there is an eruption again, it is known “what to do without going to the Council of Ministers” or being conditioned by “the lack of coordination” between the different departments.
It would also ensure that in the event of an eruption the immediate expropriation of land is allowed to replace infrastructure and homes damaged by the flows, as well as “facilitate the payroll” of the personnel hired during the emergency.
With this law, Feijóo has abounded, “it is not necessary to improvise, for each ministry to issue an order according to its occurrence, its budget or sensitivity.”
The leader of the PP has reproached the Government that at this point there are still “more than a hundred families without housing” and has criticized the pace of construction of the modular, because in Spain, he added, “there is enough money” for this to already be solved.
If this is not the case, he has continued, it is due to “negligence, disinterest or lack of commitment” to La Palma.
Feijóo has indicated, in clear reference to President Pedro Sánchez, that “it is not about coming many times but about doing things”, nor about “promising continuously, but executing previous commitments”.
On the argument put forward by the Government that by legal imperative it cannot exceed 50% of the financing of infrastructures that are not of its priority, Feijóo has argued that in the case of La Palma it is “an extraordinary assumption” in the that “an ordinary law cannot be applied”.
“I do not remember that there is legislation that prohibits extraordinary decisions in extraordinary situations,” added Feijóo, who recalled that in Galicia, with the Prestige catastrophe, “there was no problem in financing the municipalities 100% of their affected infrastructures” .
There was then a ‘Plan Galicia’ endowed with “billions of millions from the State” and also from that autonomous community, which in the case of the volcanic eruption in La Palma was able to carry out the current executive and assume all the damaged infrastructures, regardless of your property.
“That sounds more like an apology than a legal impediment to me,” Feijóo said, and if the issue was to change the law, they have had time, since it took “days” to deal with the crime of sedition.
The president of the Cabildo de La Palma, Mariano Hernández Zapata, has stressed that Feijóo’s visit to the island “comes to give certainty” that the next Government of Spain will have “a determined commitment” to this territory.
And it is that “unfortunately”, Zapata said, this commitment by the current executive “has faltered in recent times”, when La Palma “has ceased to be in the media spotlight”.
The leader of the Canarian PP and candidate for the presidency, Manuel Domínguez, has indicated for his part that the community cannot afford to “turn its back” on the primary sector, which “is having a hard time, beyond the possible extortion of the ranchers” who are being investigated in the so-called ‘Mediator Case’.
Domínguez has considered it a priority to promote a hydrological plan to guarantee irrigation to crops, as well as a “direct link” between the dual FP and the sector, in addition to continuing in the line of a tax reduction after the “rectification” of the Government of the Canary Islands by lowering the IGIC for cattle feed.