The President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, has announced the launch of new economic aid worth 11,000 million euros for the hotel, tourism, catering, and small and medium-sized enterprises. The opposition leader, Pablo Casado, has replied that this figure is not enough and that these sectors need 50,000 million in aid.
For her part, the president of Ciudadanos, Inés Arrimadas, asked Sánchez for more details about this plan and, specifically, whether it involves direct or financial aid. The PDeCAT spokesman, Ferrán Bel, has also stressed this issue, warning that what the aforementioned sectors need is direct aid and not loans.
The Socialist leader made this announcement during his appearance in Congress to account for the state of alarm but only explained that this new package will be mobilised by the government in “the coming weeks” and aims to continue supporting these sectors “during the tough weeks ahead”.
The head of government has only stressed that all these sectors were competitive before the pandemic and that this aid aims to reinforce “the solvency of their balance sheets” so that they can resume their economic activity, make the investments and hire the employees necessary to get back on their feet. Economic recovery must also be “emotional”. He pointed out.
With regard to the epidemiological situation, Sánchez stressed that prudence is not only a civic duty, but should also be “a political duty” because “we run the risk that the arrival of the vaccines will relax us and we will find ourselves in a fourth wave that we must avoid”.
At this point, despite the improvement in the data, he stressed that “we cannot lower our guard” if we want to avoid a new wave, and therefore pointed out that “the goal is not to save Easter, but to lower the incidence to below 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants”.
For his part, the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, criticised the current “fraudulent” state of alarm and, as in previous speeches, referred to Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” and warned China that in the future, China will end up paying the international community for this matter.
From EH Bildu, Mertxe Aizpurúa, called on Sánchez to be more prudent and criticised the fact that he approves the lifting of the measures as soon as the data improves.
