Felipe González, on the regional debt reduction: "We are all going to bear the debt"

Former socialist president Felipe González is very critical of the agreement to forgive the debt with Catalonia and the proposal to apply it to the rest of the autonomous communities . "We are all going to swallow the debt," said the former president during his speech at the annual meeting of the Valencian Association of Businessmen (AVE), which includes more than 170 Valencian businessmen such as Juan Roig, Vicente Boluda or Adolfo Utor.

Just a few hours before the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council, where the Government will present its proposal to eliminate part of the debt of the autonomous communities by nearly 83 billion euros , González once again expressed his disagreements with Pedro Sánchez.

" Removing the debt of a regional government does not mean removing the debt of the Spanish people , it is moving it from here to here next door," he said, explaining that this forgiveness does not change the volume of debt of the State as a whole and, therefore, of all citizens. For González, the measure has been adopted by ERC and he assured that it was Junqueras who announced it before the Minister of Finance.

The former president insisted on calling on PSOE and PP to reach state agreements to deal with political polarisation, so as not to be left in the hands of "six or seven votes" of the Catalan pro-independence parties. "Have we made progress in coexistence in Catalonia? Yes ," González acknowledged, and the counterpart has been that "we have moved the process to Madrid." According to the former socialist leader, now "they get it with six or seven votes" in Congress, so he does not see an improvement in the situation either.

At the business event in Valencia, González also referred to the DANA and the controversies over the management of the emergency and reconstruction. "The DANA, with all its drama, must be seen as a failure of politics in general ," he stressed, due to the lack of infrastructure built in the previous years to avoid the tragedy.

González explained that "politics did not cause the DANA, nature is much stronger than us" but he has seen the effects of the lack of planning and agreements. According to his experience, "we should have agreed from the first minute on the magnitude of the tragedy" and he asserted that "in order to govern, it is not bad to prepare for the worst in order to avoid it."

Despite this, the former president did not want to enter into direct criticism of the Government of Spain or of Mazón's Generalitat because there are already open commissions and legal claims. "The responsible thing would be to create a State commission mainly of technicians," he stressed, because "what I can assure you is that another DANA will come."

In contrast to his disagreements with Sánchez, Gonzáles agreed with Spain's position on Ukraine. "The invasion of Ukraine is absolutely illegal" and compared it to the past of "Tsarist or Stalinist" Russia.

Regarding Trump's victory, Gonzáles said he fears that "it will bring the definitive decline of the United States and the definitive triumph of China," and recalled that the United States is the most resilient democracy and constitution in the world, which would be bad news for international politics.