José Luis Martínez-Almeida went to Brussels last Wednesday as commander-in-chief of the PP mayors.
Dressed in a blue suit and matching tie, he appeared at the central building of the European Union to launch some fierce criticism against the Executive of Pedro Sánchez.
He was in charge of leading the protests of all the conservative aldermen in Spain.
The also national spokesman for the popular ones summoned the correspondents of the national media in a patio.
There, surrounded by a swarm of microphones of different colors, he said:
―The management of European funds must be strengthened!
Visibly pissed off, he continued: “Arbitrary distribution is taking place.
I insist, this does not harm the PP, this harms the Spanish.
Here we are all equal before the law.
We all have to overcome this pandemic and European funds are decisive to do so regardless of where you live and where you govern.
This is what we have done and said in the community institutions”.
Two days later, as EL PAÍS has learned, the mayor of Madrid has given up requesting tens of millions of euros that were going to be used to reform the capital's housing stock.
Of the 160 million that had fallen on the Community of Madrid, Almeida has only requested 24. According to data from the Ministry of Housing, the funds have not even been exhausted.
The person in charge of the Environment and Housing region, Paloma Martín, detailed a few days ago that she had received the request from 65 municipalities of the Community, among which is the capital, for a total amount of 112 million euros .
In the absence of a few days to close the term, 49 million euros would be missing to distribute;
from which Madrid could have benefited.
According to the sources consulted, the Madrid City Council knew perfectly well that it could request much more than 24 million euros.
Above all, analyzing its housing stock.
According to the latest available data, which is from 2011, the capital's housing stock amounted to 1.5 million homes at that time.
Of these, practically 80% are built before 1980: thousands of them, even, without any type of energy insulation.
And it is precisely here where both the Community of Madrid, as well as the central government and the European Union, had put the focus for the renovations.
However, the Almeida Housing team has only requested 24 million euros to reform around 12,000 homes.
Or put another way: 1% of all houses that need renovations.
The homes that will be renovated are located in four districts: Usera, Latina, Carabanchel and Fuencarral.
Regional sources point out that the Community of Madrid and the City Council even spoke of renovating more homes than requested, but Almeida's representatives changed their minds.
"We are even talking about up to 11 residential areas and now we see that they are asking for four," these sources underline.
"This request is ridiculous," says Vicente Pérez Quintana, head of Urban Planning and Housing of the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid.
“For us the issue of rehabilitation is a key issue.
We are talking about buildings prior to the 1980s that do not have energy efficiencies built in.
You can't give up asking for money.
When we say that 80% of housing is not accessible,
Why has Almeida only asked for 24 million and has only selected four of the 131 neighborhoods in the city?
"We believe that our request is realistic and rigorous," stress sources from the City Council's Housing area.
"We must bear in mind that it is not about asking for the largest amount of money possible, but about correctly managing the aid as quickly as possible to help the neighbors."
As pointed out in a press release from the region's Housing Council, 49 million euros would still be available.
Could Madrid redo its request and request more millions?
Yes, but also rule out doing so.
“Taking into account the park in Madrid, they should have chosen to request at least 80 million euros,” says the councilor for Más Madrid, Paco Pérez, by phone.
“They have been unable to present projects to qualify for European funds according to the population and number of homes in our city.
The incompetence and disinterest of this team in Madrid has left dozens of neighborhoods and thousands of citizens without aid”.
The same happens in the PSOE, which will also ask about it in the Urban Development Commission this Wednesday.
"They have left out dozens of neighborhoods," says the party's Urban Planning spokesman, Pedro Barrero.
"Thousands of citizens of Madrid have been deprived of obtaining more funds with the consequent danger of not executing them and that the amount may be reduced in the coming years."
The budget item of the European funds for housing rehabilitation began at the beginning of the year.
The Community of Madrid, also from the PP, received from the State the first package of aid destined to improve the buildings of hundreds of thousands of Madrilenians.
The distribution of this large flow of funds was divided among all the autonomous communities.
The Madrid region received 160 million.
"Clearly, these funds are an opportunity and a lever to boost the country's economy and the transformation of the real estate sector," he told
El Economista .
, María José Piccio-Marchetti, General Director of Housing and Rehabilitation of the Community of Madrid.
"The sector was very focused on new construction and [with these aids] now a door is opened to the rehabilitation sector".
Madrid, however, has not opted for it.
Almeida's resignation to request more millions of euros occurs in a context of his criticism of the management of these funds.
For several weeks the PP has maintained an offensive against the distribution of the Government's European aid packages, accusing it of an alleged discretionary distribution of money that would be the prelude to "irregularities" and "corruption", in the words of the party president himself, Paul Married.
However, the popular Spaniards have not found almost anyone to support his thesis.
On the contrary, the European Commission has ignored their complaints and even those directly responsible for the execution of the plan, Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, from the popular family, and the Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, from the socialist family, pointed out that "it complies with the objectives",
reports Manuel V. Gómez from Brussels
.
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