A hundred people were waiting this Sunday for Sumar’s candidate for the Presidency of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, at the gates of the Toledo Palace of Congresses. They had not been able to access the interior of the building where a pre-campaign act had been announced at noon.
So the candidate stopped before those who were waiting outside, took a microphone and addressed them. “I am very sorry that you are left out”, he told them in a speech of just over two minutes in which he took the opportunity to recall that, very close to there, the PP candidate Alberto Núñez Feijóo celebrated another act with which the ‘ popular’ have called ‘the mayors of change’.
Yolanda Díaz has said of Feijóo that he is “a man who lies to the Spanish, a man who has no word. Today here I tell you that we are going to win the elections, ”she assured, starting the applause.
“I ask you to mobilize and make this campaign your own, because this campaign is about your lives, it is about continuing to win rights, it is about labor reform, it is about minimum wage, about revaluing pensions, it is about health and public education and it is about that we don’t want to go back.”
Once inside the building, he has taken the opportunity to wink at the river that surrounds the city. “I am in the city of the Tagus that deserves a green project, that deserves to be recovered and with dignity. Come out and vote in defense of the Tagus”. He has advanced his intention to reduce the working day by one hour if he manages to command the Executive, a proposal to which he has added the increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI), since it still “does not allow living with dignity”, or a strategy to tax more bank profits.
The acting vice-president of the Government of Spain has also defended in Toledo her proposal to create a universal inheritance so that the young people of our country receive 20,000 euros when they reach the age of majority “so that they can develop a vital project”.
Pérez Rey: “Fuck the unemployed! That was and is the policy of the PP”
The number 2 of Yolanda Díaz in the Ministry of Labor also participated in the act. The Secretary of State for Employment and Social Economy ranks fifth on the Add to Congress list for Toledo.
Joaquín Pérez Rey has said that “it is a pleasure to present the next president of the Government of Spain in my city” and has defined Sumar as “the most useful political movement in our country. The one who has done what everyone said could not be done”.
He has reviewed some of the government actions of Yolanda Díaz at the head of the ministry. “A month after arriving, we repealed that fateful element that allowed sick workers to be fired. I don’t know if today Feijoo is going to remind the mayors that their labor reform consisted of firing sick people”, he said in reference to the act that at almost the same time the PP was also starring in Toledo, with the presence of the ‘popular’ candidate for the Presidency of Spain.
I don’t know if today Feijoo in Toledo is going to remind the mayors that their labor reform consisted of firing sick people
Joaquin Perez Rey
— Secretary of State for Employment and Social Economy and candidate for Congress for Toledo
“We all had the bad luck of running into the pandemic. 800,000 workers went to the streets in 15 days, most of them temporary. We told them that we were going to protect them and we have done it: 3.5 million protected workers and more than half a million protected companies”.
He has contrasted this “protection model” with employment management during the PP governments in Spain. “Do you know how the financial crisis was resolved with the PP? Six million unemployed ”, he assured to continue. “Do you know what they did with the unemployed? Did they protect them? On the contrary. They twisted the protection systems, lowered unemployment protection and shouted without any problem: fuck the unemployed! That was and that is the policy of the PP”.
He has also recalled the labor reform. “Yolanda Díaz’s is the only one in this country that has not cut a single right” or how Spain, which “was a country of casuals”, has evolved towards a temporary employment rate “in the European average. It is the smallest in the history of Spain and it was done in one year. Of course you could, who couldn’t was the bipartisanship”.
He has also cited the 18 agreements reached within the framework of social dialogue. She “She has been the first Minister of Labor to recognize unemployment for domestic workers. Today there is an artist statute that is basically a labor statute. There is no resignation. Let no one tell you the milonga that we cannot make our country more prosperous and democratic” and here she criticized the PSOE. “The gentlemen with whom we govern have not made it easy for us.”
“The discourse of the right is that of fear or hate and what the left does is excite”
Later, the candidate for the Senate Irene Arcalá participated in the interventions, who has chosen to mark the differences between the right and the left. “We have a right in a speech of fear, of hate. They lie and say that general violence does not exist. What the left does is excite”.
He has criticized the precariousness of youth employment. “This way we cannot have a project for the future” and he has advocated a change in the working day because “we have been with it for 102 years. “You have to reduce it,” she said, ratifying what is one of Sumar’s main program proposals.
In her speech, she highlighted the role played by the ministers of Podemos Ione Belarra and Irene Montero and their equality, housing or protection policies for the LGTBI collective. Additionally, he has advocated for more investment in mental health. “There is a personnel deficit in public health. There are 18 professionals for every 100,000 inhabitants in Spain. And in Castilla-La Mancha, less than seven”.
In the act they have also intervened, the head of the list to Congress for Toledo Marta Romero who has focused on “strong women” such as Yolanda Díaz herself and in particular her mother and grandmother. “Things can be changed” and she has given the Tagus River as an example. “With political will, one can bathe in the Tagus again, but with political will.”
Olga Ávalos, number 2 on the list for Congress for Toledo, also intervened with a speech that – similar to Romero’s – had a lot of personal experiences to influence the idea that “Sumar is about hope and not losing more rights ”.
“I saw people lose their homes just like I did back in the day. I thought it couldn’t happen again. It could not happen again to be at the crossroads between paying the electricity or feeding my son ”, she asserted.
He has advocated for decent jobs, for a decent pension for the elderly or for quality public services, among other issues. “Sumar goes from a sustainable and ecological model. Denying climate change does not offer solutions, only hides the problems” and she has expressed her desire to live in a society “that is not afraid of diversity”.
