The Government delegate in Galicia, Pedro Blanco, has today stressed in Cedeira (A Coruña) that the Government of Pedro Sánchez deepens its recognition of the essential role of the City Councils and that it translates into the largest transfers agreed for local entities and the flexibility of the tax rules for 2024.
Pedro Blanco has today valued the announcements made this week by the Government at the meeting of the National Commission of Local Administration (CNAL), which are “the best demonstration of our municipal commitment.” The delegate has detailed that the Government will raise the funding of local entities by 22.6% next year, a decision “of justice for local entities, with which they can provide quality public services to their neighborhood.”
Pedro Blanco has explained that this increase will add to the rise experienced by corporations in this year 2023, making it possible to greatly exceed the 1 billion euros of transfers.
He also welcomed the relaxation of the stability requirements of local governments for the coming year, “which allows local governments to have a greater margin of expenditure and investment, which will result in better municipal services by and for citizens.” This is possible by the decision of the Ministry of Finance that replaces the initial requirement of a surplus of 0.2% with the budgetary balance. These two tenths of an increase in the fiscal margin will be assumed by the General Administration of the State, which will make a greater effort to reduce the deficit.
The government delegate highlighted the “permanent dialogue” of the Government of Pedro Sánchez with the municipalities, as expressed in the meeting of the CNAL on Monday. And he contrasted this dialogue with the stagnation of other administrations that go against the interests of the citizens of Galicia, a direct beneficiary of the investments and actions of local corporations.
Faced with this paralysis, Pedro Blanco recalled that the Government continues to complete the extraordinary measures that contributed in recent years, those of the pandemic and the crisis, which local entities had been in a position of better financial strength. Among these measures, he mentioned the support for municipalities at financial risk, the procedures for financing payments to suppliers of municipalities, the possibility of re-investigating the surplus in financially sustainable investments, the updating of the deliveries on account calculated without the impact of the pandemic or compensation for the implementation of the System of Immediate Supply of Information in VAT (SII-VAT), a measure approved by the previous Government.
Magdalena Beach
Pedro Blanco went today to Cedeira (A Coruña) to supervise the projects that the Government will implement in this municipality “and that are another example of how we collaborate with the municipalities”. Together with the mayor, Pablo Moreda, he toured the promenade next to the beach of Magdalena where he advanced that the year 2024 will be “the year of the recovery of the beach” with the execution of the project in which the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge have been working in recent years.
The delegate informed the mayor that the Ministry has the procurement documents for the work and that the budgets contain the necessary funding forecast. This guarantees that the project will be hired next year so that the works can begin after they see it “avoiding the moments of maximum occupation of the sandy area”. Pedro Blanco anticipated that, thanks to this investment of 2.3 million euros, “there will be a before and after for the beach in the town of Cedeira”.
The project aims to correct the losses of the beach surface and ensure its functionality in the short and medium term, as well as to conserve and enhance the biodiversity of the protected adjoining spaces, enhance recreational uses in the beach area and minimize the effects of climate change on this area. For that, Costas will recover the lost sand and build a 77-metre spike to prevent the current disappearance of the beach and the step that occurs every summer and that prevents the normal use of this sandy area. The project will end with the repopulation of the area using native vegetation.
This action is in addition to the investment of 340,000 euros that this Ministry executed through the Demarcation of Backs and that allowed the recovery of the Cetarias del Sarridal. This action currently allows for the contemplation of this environment and the valuation of an example of the marine industrial tradition of this City Council.