Alberto Rodríguez, Vox’s lead candidate for the Congress of Deputies, rejects the suggestion that the measures proposed by his party to combat illegal immigration will turn the Canary Islands into a prison to detain people arriving on the islands in small boats and canoes.
In an interview with EFE, Rodríguez points out that the fight against illegal immigration is one of the three pillars of Vox’s government programme, specifically, the second, with the aim of tackling this issue through «strict» enforcement of existing legislation.
Vox: Deportations are intended to curb illegal immigration
Rodríguez argues that deportation orders must be enforced against those who enter Spain illegally, and that legal foreign nationals who commit serious offences, reoffend in relation to minor offences or «live exclusively on state benefits without integrating into society» should be deported, measures which he does not believe will turn the Canary Islands into a prison for migrants.
In the view of the Vox candidate, the archipelago currently acts as a bridge to Europe due to «the pull factor» generated by the mass regularisations carried out by the PP governments, which «hold the record», and the PSOE, as well as the transfers funded by the Government.
Alberto Rodríguez is convinced that, if the migration routes were curbed, it would put an end to the smuggling gangs and prevent deaths in the Atlantic.
Referring to his programme, he explains that the national priority is the first step to be taken to ensure that Spaniards have preferential access to social benefits, healthcare and social housing, as Vox maintains that they have been sidelined in favour of foreigners.
The councillor for Las Palmas de Gran Canaria cites as an example of this situation a municipal agreement with the Cabildo on social assistance, which gave ‚far greater weight‘ to the fact of being a foreigner ‚than to other criteria‘ such as income or status as a large family, thereby excluding the Canarian population, he argues.
He adds that, for this reason, Vox aims to overhaul social policies and allocation criteria so that Spanish citizens are always the primary beneficiaries of public resources, mirroring the agreements reached by his party in other autonomous communities where it governs in coalition with the PP.
Housing: Vox wants to release land and cut taxes
As for the problem of access to housing, Rodríguez attributes it to the imbalance that has arisen between a shortage of supply and soaring demand caused by the arrival of six million people over five years, compounded by the current Housing Act, which, as the rapporteur, he had already warned would have unintended consequences.
As a solution, amongst other measures, he points out that Vox advocates repealing that law, liberalising all municipal land that does not require environmental or town-planning protection, and exempting housing from taxes such as the IGIC, property transfer tax, capital gains tax and planning permission fees, in order to reduce the final price by a third.
As for the third pillar of his programme, he explained that it focuses on deregulation to remove the bureaucratic and environmental obstacles imposed by the EU and the various Spanish authorities, as these constitute a «burden» on economic competitiveness.
Tourism and respect for the natural environment
On the subject of tourism, Rodríguez emphasises that Vox rejects the imposition of «artificial limits» or the «stigmatisation» of the islands‘ main economic driver, and advocates balanced development whose only constraint is respect for the natural environment, taking César Manrique’s historic model in Lanzarote as a benchmark.
«If we destroy what attracts tourists, they won’t come, and that would be contradictory,» he says.
The Vox candidate for Las Palmas rejects the accusations made by Coalición Canaria that his party is opposed to the Canary Islands‘ Economic and Fiscal Regime (REF) or the transport subsidy for residents.
Rodríguez emphasises that Vox has always supported these special arrangements in Parliament for historical reasons and in the interests of territorial cohesion; he is also in favour of exploring measures to reduce the cost of tickets for Canary Islanders living on the mainland and to prevent the artificial inflation of base fares caused, in his view, by subsidies.
Canary Islands: Vox expects a significant increase in votes in the elections
The candidate highlights the strong growth in Vox’s membership in the Canary Islands and the rest of Spain, and predicts that it will be the party that makes the biggest gains in the forthcoming elections and the only one to increase its share of the vote, and not just because of what the polls suggest, «we’ve never trusted them», but because they can sense «on the street» a desire for their «common-sense policies» to be implemented.
Rodríguez reveals that he enjoyed his party leader’s interview on David Broncano’s programme *La Revuelta*, because it has allowed people to get to know the «Santiago Abascal that we at Vox already know».
«He is not the monster that so many media outlets have sought to portray and stigmatise, but rather the person they have seen there,» he asserts, as it has become clear that he is a candidate with «strong convictions, proposals based on pure common sense and a great deal of respect, which he will defend come what may and to the very end».
Comments (0)
No comments on this article yet.