In his usual video to close the year, the president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, reviews measures adopted by his Government and some of the promises made: from free tuition at the university to access to housing or the plan to attract back to Galicia to the emigrants. This last objective involves the creation of quality jobs that, in their analysis, are linked to industrial projects that “will have to respect” the environment. The statement makes sense in the context of a year, 2024, marked by social opposition to plans such as Altri’s to install a macrocellulose plant in Palas de Rei, with massive demonstrations against it, or the Touro mine, whose promoters have reworked a project that has been declared strategic by the regional administration.
Rueda calls, in his first message after achieving an absolute majority at the polls, for the return of the Galicians who have emigrated, both the descendants of those who did so decades ago and the more recent ones for economic and work reasons: “Go away It can be an option, but it should never be an obligation.” To attract or retain them in Galicia, he admits, “it is necessary that there are quality, well-paid jobs.” “There are natural resources here, we have a lot of talent, we have infrastructure and industrial land for projects that want to settle and that, of course, will have to respect our environment and our surroundings,” he says, in a video recorded at the Colexio de Fonseca, historic building of the University of Santiago de Compostela.
The Galician president focuses a good part of his speech on young people and defends his cabinet’s policies on education, but in what affects free education at all levels: from what is applied for the third year in nursery schools to the recently implemented one in university enrollments, regardless of income level. He makes no mention, however, of the situation of Galician in education or of the renewal of the language pact that he has announced among his purposes for the legislature. The Minister of Culture, Xuventude e Lingua, began contacts with the opposition, the Royal Galician Academy or the Bureau for Linguistic Normalization 15 years after Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s PP legislated for the first time to reduce the presence of Galician in school and abandon the consensus reached by BNG, PSdeG and the conservative formation then led by Manuel Fraga Iribarne.
In his review, the Galician president cites the promise of doubling the public housing stock in this legislature so that it goes from 4,000 to 8,000 apartments in 2028. After four PP governments in the Xunta with little momentum in this area, Rueda has placed the topic on the agenda and makes weekly announcements about the evolution of public promotions that are underway. In its 2024 balance sheet, it considers that “it is very hard that people of all ages, but especially the youngest, have to talk about housing out of concern and not out of hope.”
Before closing his message, Rueda remembers the victims of DANA in Valencia and sends his support to those who do not spend Christmas with joy and to those who care for dependent people. By 2025, it promises to continue presenting Galicia as “an exception of serenity, responsibility and high-mindedness.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
