Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría is the PP spokeswoman in the Spanish Congress, and is currently in our fair corner of the world after it was discovered her great grandparents came from Serón. (Which allowed La Voz to say “Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría desciende de Serón“… try saying that three times fast after a shot of tequila).
After her visit to Serón, and with her car boot groaning under the weight of free jamons, chorizos and other local delicacies pressed upon her, she went to Almería where, fired up no doubt by her high carb lunch in the mountains (La Voz, the socialist mouthpiece, remarked that she was “argumentative and combative”), she reminded everyone that the PP estimates that Almería is owed about 1,200 million euros that have been promised to the province in budgets between 2004 and 2009 but has never been paid.
The money, it seems, is in government projects promised but never undertaken; investment that went elsewhere; and money that was returned unspent to the central coffers.
It’s not the first time that the PP has raised the subject, but it seems to be the first time one of the head honchos (honchesses?) has bought up the matter. No doubt pressing home their advantadge, after a recent poll gave them double the support the PSOE has in the province. She promised Asempal and the Chamber of Commerce that the PP would instruct their local senators in the Junta to fight tooth and nail for this money “promised, but, like so many of the PSOE’s flamboyent promises, unspent”.
Now, nobody really believes that if the PP get in they’ll write a cheque from 1,200,000,000€ for the province. But it’s nice to imagine it. There are about 680,000 people in Almería, so that’s…. about 1,700€ a head?
She also used the opportunity to announce that the PP will be making an official request to A) lower IVA for tourism businesses to help compete against lower cost destinations (finally, a sensible idea from someone) and B) they’ll be fighting for more trade barriers to stop those nasty little people across the Med from flooding us with cheap fruit and veg.