energy
Yolanda Díaz: “In our country, energy is concentrated in five large multinationals that have just distributed 19,000 million euros. (…) Whoever produces energy cannot be the one who sells it: it is an oligopoly that cannot continue.”
Because?
Although it is true that the five largest energy companies in Spain (three electricity and gas companies: Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy; and two oil companies: Repsol and Cepsa) have a dominant share of the energy markets, these companies together recorded a profit of 13.880 million euros and not 19,000 as Díaz claims. The three largest electricity companies in Spain (Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy) clearly dominate the electricity market: their combined market share is 42% in generation, 64% in marketing – offering their services on both the free and the regulated market – and 91% % in sales, according to the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC).
Santiago Abascal: “Here, the thermal power plants are demolished, like the one in Carboneras, and the machines are taken to Morocco and installed.”
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Because?
Both the Carboneras and As Pontes coal-fired power plants, the two best-known power plants, were demolished following a request by the operating company Endesa, rather than the government, to close the plants. Then, in December 2019, the energy company referred to the “significant lack of competitiveness”. [de ambas] in meeting market demand”. There is also no evidence that the machines from the Carboneras plant ended up in Morocco, as the Vox candidate asserts.
gender violence
Santiago Abascal: “With this law against gender-based violence, you have not succeeded in reducing the murders of women”
Because?
The Gender-Based Violence Act was passed in 2004, although official figures have been collected since 2003. That year, 71 men murdered their partners or ex-partners; and the numbers have gradually declined. In 2019, the year this legislature began, 56 women were murdered; in 2020 50; in 2021, 49; in 2022 49; and this 2023, this year there are already 28.
trans law
Santiago Abascal: “And if a man defines himself as female and has just died in the municipality of Madrid, he can take away a woman’s reserved place in public service.”
Because?
Last March, one of the candidates, who had participated as a man in the other phases of the opposition, during the physical tests in the Madrid municipality of Torrelodones, during the physical tests to opt for a position with the local police, requested it also based on the parameters applied to women are assessed. To justify his application, he submitted a notarial deed in which he asked to be registered as a transgender woman. The episode sparked controversy and raised alarm over what is said to be the first case of a man taking advantage of the so-called transgender law to change his registered gender and gain advantages. The truth is that the candidate has not stripped a woman of the post: the Torrelodones City Council refused to classify the candidate as a woman. Furthermore, the notarial deed presented by the candidate referred to the 2016 Law of the Autonomous Community of Madrid on the matter and not to the transnational law, as the Torrelodones City Council confirmed to this newspaper.
packages
Santiago Abascal: “With a force as respectable as Bildu, you approved labor reform”
Because?
It is not true that Bildu supported labor reform. Sumar’s candidate Yolanda Díaz immediately reminded the Vox boss: “Mr. Abascal, Bildu voted with you against the labor reform.” It was accepted by 175 votes in favor and 174 against. They were opposed by PP, Vox, Bildu, ERC, Junts, CUP, BNG, Foro Asturias, UPN (against party discipline) and former Ciudadanos MP Pablo Cambronero (174 votes).
Surroundings
Santiago Abascal: “A few days ago, the socialists, including the Spanish socialists, voted to start drafting a law with a very nice name, namely the Law for the Restoration of Nature, but which hides the fact that it includes all river and Removing river barriers would wipe out all the farmland in Spain.”
Because?
The Nature Restoration Law is a new European regulation currently in the works that aims not to protect natural ecosystems, but to try to restore the ecosystems that have already been damaged to good condition. Among their actions is the rehabilitation of rivers by removing obstacles that interrupt their course and spaces degraded by activities such as agriculture. But Santiago Abascal’s statement is completely exaggerated, as he in no way seeks the removal of all river barriers or the ending of all arable land in Spain.
A 2020 study published in the journal Nature estimated that there were more than 1.2 million barriers dividing European rivers (which has major implications for biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics). Most of these obstacles are small structures (such as weirs, locks, waterwheels, pipes, etc.) and many have been abandoned for decades. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 set the target of restoring at least 25,000 km of rivers in European countries, a very ambitious commitment, but of course it does not mean removing all obstacles, which would be impossible. In addition, the regulations are in no way aimed at abolishing all the dams on the continent that function normally and play a fundamental role.
This law also aims to implement measures to restore at least 20% of all land and sea areas in the EU and restore degraded ecosystems, in some cases due to agriculture. But again, under its own weight, it is striking that it is a great exaggeration to say that it intends to destroy all arable land in Spain.
dryness
Santiago Abascal: “Pedro Sánchez destroyed part of Spain’s wealth by demolishing thermal power plants when families could not pay for electricity.” This will negate it. Even blowing up dams in the middle of a drought will also deny this.”
Because?
It is not true that dams have been torn down, as the far right have been falsely claiming for months, and this Wednesday Santiago Abascal (Vox) just reiterated that he went a step further and said he “blew them up”. In reality, hundreds of obstacles that disrupt river currents in the country have been removed, but these are mostly dams (small barriers designed to divert water from rivers) and other small barriers that are no longer used.
The reality is that the storage capacity of water reserves in Spain is greater today than it was a few years ago, not so much because more reservoirs have been built, but because some work has been done to refill (expand) existing reservoirs. Today there is infrastructure to store 56,069 cubic hectometres of water, 1% more than 10 years ago. The destruction of dams and swamps is a widespread scam on the networks that Vox has included in its programming for this election.
It is true that coal-fired power plants, like in many other European countries, are disappearing because they are the most polluting source of electricity. But it’s not true that keeping it there would have improved the bill: renewables, rather than fossil fuels (coal and gas), are the cheapest generation technologies today.
Steer
Santiago Abascal: “They used inflation to collect more instead of cutting taxes, instead of reducing the tax burden. That is why we rely on a large tax reduction with two tranches of income tax. Because we know that big tax cuts serve to collect more in the medium term.”
Because?
It is wrong that the government has not reduced taxes. In fact, Finance Minister María Jesús Montero said that they are the executive that cut taxes the most this legislature in terms of energy tax cuts. The executive branch has cut energy taxes since rising inflation began, a measure that cost public finances nearly €7,000 million in 2022 alone. The tax office expects that the reduction in energy taxes will cost around 8,000 million this year. The government has also approved a reduction in income tax for incomes below €21,000. Still, it’s true that more has been taken in the last two years, but not just because of inflation. Above all, the price increase has increased VAT revenues and led to the so-called cold escalation, ie an increase in effective income tax rates with rising salaries. The tax authority estimates that 50% of the increase in revenue in 2022 will be due to inflation (30% according to the government). Other factors, such as economic growth or the increased use of cash since the pandemic, have also contributed to growth.
There is no empirical evidence for the thesis that large tax cuts lead to tax cuts in the medium term.
employment
Yolanda Díaz: “You just said that we are destroying the economy and not making policies for farmers. I’ll give you the dates. We have more agricultural workers than ever before, 750,000. Your statement is not true.
Because?
Yolanda Díaz gave two pieces of information: one true and one false. As the second vice president and labor minister noted in the debate, around 750,000 people work in agriculture in Spain. According to the Active Population Survey for the first quarter of the year, the exact number is 748,200. However, this number is far from the highest number of people employed in this sector. The record registered by the INE corresponds to that of the first quarter of 2008, namely 870,100. The data for the first quarter of last year is also higher than the current one at 827,700.
Pedro Sánchez: “We’ve never had so many young workers and the lowest youth unemployment rate”
Because?
According to the Active Population Survey, 1,105,400 people aged 16-24 worked in Spain in the first quarter of the year. This number is well below the record high for this survey in the third quarter of 2008, when there were 1,936,200 workers in this age group. They were almost twice as high. They are also lower than in three of the four quarters last year.
Also with regard to the unemployment rate the statement of the President is not correct. In the first quarter, it was 26.7% for workers aged 20-24 and 46.9% for workers aged 16-19. None of these age groups are at their lowest rate on record: before the Great Recession, it ranged from 14% to 15% for those aged 20 to 24 and from 25% to 30% for those aged 16 to 19. year olds.
Yolanda Díaz: “Mr. Abascal and Mr. Feijoo, who represent the same thing here, want a cleaning lady to work until she is 70, for example.”
Because?
There have been no public statements in which PP candidate Alberto Núñez Feijóo or Vox candidate Santiago Abascal have defended that there are workers with high physical demands who must remain employed until they are 70 years old. However, there was one authorized voice in the PP who brought this idea to the table in an interview in El Mundo for some cases: Parliament Speaker Cuca Gamarra. To a comment from the interviewer who said, “I see that the next generations will have to retire at 70,” Gamarra replied, “Well, nothing would happen if life expectancy kept going up and we got there safely.” I think many people would be willing to work a few more years because they look like they want to. And in many cases there is an intellectual capital that we do not have to do without. We must strive for flexibility in these policies.” It should be noted that this position is not significantly different from that of the Department of Social Security, which has approved incentives for deferred retirement to extend careers in low-impact occupations.
Business
Santiago Abascal: “We have experienced a very complicated situation all over the world, but Spain is delivering the worst economic data within Europe.”
Because?
It is wrong that Spain has the worst economic data in Europe. According to Eurostat data, Spain is currently one of the countries with the strongest growth. However, the Spanish economy was only able to make up for the gross domestic product lost due to the pandemic in the first quarter of 2023. It was one of the last countries to catch up, according to Eurostat data, and Spain currently ranks second to bottom in the EU by cumulative real GDP since early 2019, ahead of only Germany, whose economy has slipped back into recession. Spain is barely 1% above Covid registered levels, putting it very close to the Czech Republic. Poland is 10% above; Greece, 7.7%; Portugal, 6.3%; Italy 2.3% and France 1.9%.
Yolanda Díaz to Santiago Abascal: “You didn’t vote for the interprofessional minimum wage.” [a Vox]. You vote for nothing.”
Because?
The increases in the minimum wage are not decided by the House of Representatives and are therefore not the subject of a parliamentary debate. They will come into force as soon as they have been approved by the Council of Ministers. Article 27 of the Workers’ Statute limits this competence to the executive: “The government, after consultation with the most representative trade union organizations and business associations, sets the intersectoral minimum wage annually.”
Overall, Vox has criticized the government for some of these increases. In 2021, Ultra party spokesman Iván Espinosa de los Monteros said he shared “that Spaniards earn more with a more modest salary”, albeit “at the expense of social security contributions”. He said the rise in the SMI “must not come at the expense” of costs borne by employers and reckoned that if it did “many jobs would be destroyed”. That omen was proven wrong with nearly 21 million registered workers in June.
credits
With information from: Elisa Silió, Isabel Valdés, José Luis Aranda, Laura Delle Femmine, Miguel Ángel Medina, Antonio Maqueda, Julio Núñez, Ignacio Fariza, Óscar López-Fonseca, Miguel González, Oriol Güell, Emilio Sánchez Hidalgo, JJ Gálvez, Clemente Alvarez and Pablo Guimon
Video:
Design: Fernando Hernandez
Development: Carlos Munoz
Coordination: Guiomar del Ser, Jesús Sérvulo and Brenda Valverde Rubio
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