The Galicia that Feijóo leaves

Alberto Núñez Feijóo was 48 years old when he took office as president of the Xunta de Galicia, in 2009. He was escorted at the ceremony by the new president of Parliament, Pilar Rojo, a personal friend of Mariano Rajoy, and by Manuel Chaves, vice president of the Government .

In the first row, Manuel Fraga dozed.

The dream of the old politician was outlined in Feijóo, after a civil war in the PPdeG, a strange figure of consensus on the Galician right: neither thrown into the hills by

of the previous dauphin of Fraga, Xosé Cuiña, nor an elitist of

de Rajoy and Romay Beccaria.

Although Feijóo is the political godson of the latter, part of his career was developed in Madrid (his name was considered as Minister of Health of that Community) and there, definitely, he will settle.

Thirteen years after beginning to preside over the Xunta, only two years less than Fraga (Fraga governed Galicia after not being able to govern Spain; Feijóo will try to govern Spain after governing Galicia), the last viceroy of the right leaves a community in which there is only unanimity regarding the projection of its image.

"Alberto Núñez Feijóo is a genius," says Valentín González Formoso, leader of the Galician Socialists.

“From political

”, he adds after a few seconds of suspense.

“In the morning an iron fist in Galicia, in the afternoon moderation in Madrid, and after midnight, a couple of barbarities in

”, he says in reference to a program on the Intereconomy chain.

"He's the same guy."

What Galicia does Feijóo leave behind?

“With the data in hand”, continues Formoso, “he leaves Galicia with more public debt (from 8% to 19%), with more unemployment (from 9.5% to 11%) and with less population: these are objective data.

We lost all the savings banks, we lost the Galician nature of Unión Fenosa, 138 schools were closed in these years and not a single public residence for the elderly has been opened”.

María Cadaval, PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Santiago, circumscribes to the 2008 crisis a good part of the economic disasters that hit Galicia in the early years of Feijóo, such as the loss of CaixaGalicia and Caixanova, or the closure of Ferroatlántica , Isowat, Poligal, Endesa in As Pontes, Naturgy in Meirama, "and many others who, it seems, have been caught by surprise by the decarbonisation process".

The socialist Formoso specifically mentions this process of decarbonization to emphasize another of the defects that, in his opinion, the administration of the new president of the PP has incurred.

“Many strategic sectors have been dropped for a very simple reason: Feijóo always had the goal of finishing in Madrid,

and that has made him pass by in matters in which he could leave pens and appear on certain covers.

Copper mines, hydrogen plants, strategic sectors... Here there has been an absolute paralysis because a leader takes risks, and this president did not risk anything that could cause problems.

“His entire government,” says the leader of the BNG and head of the opposition in Galicia, Ana Pontón, “is explained in the hug he gave Ignacio Galán, president of Iberdrola, after his inauguration: that hug explains the wind boom predator that we have in Galicia, and the refusal to fight a Galician electricity tariff”.

"All the indicators of Galicia are superior to those of the rest of Spain", says Alfonso Rueda, vice-president of the Xunta and favorite in the succession of Feijóo.

“There is more and better quality of life.

And the data given by the opposition must be put into perspective with the macroeconomic data, without them they are not understood.

When we arrived there were 50,000 more unemployed, today there are 30,000 less unemployed.

The only reality is that in Galicia there is today, after 12 years of Núñez Feijóo's Government, more and better quality of life.

Better health, better social services.

The second autonomous community in Spain that has grown the most in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

And this is the Feijóo brand: we have taken on less debt than the average, and we are the second community with the least debt per inhabitant.

There are many, many facts that contradict what the opposition has said,

Cadaval provides analysis and data.

“The GDP level of 2008 was not recovered until a decade later, in 2018, with more than a year behind the national average.

The composition of the productive structure hardly underwent changes, and those that can be seen are not encouraging.

In 2021, the relative weight of the primary sector had not changed compared to 2015 (5.4% of GDP, three tenths less), nor had that of construction, around 7% of GDP, although the relative weight has fallen of industry, which lost two points (from 18.8% to 16.8%) and that of public administration rose by two points, as well as one point for professional activities, while the services sector remained at the same level, around 44% of the total”, he explains.

College professor turns to

to answer the question of how it is possible that, despite growing, the productive reality of Galicia has not changed too much.

“It is the dialogue that the Red Queen has with Alice.

The Queen runs with Alice yelling 'faster, faster', and she begins to think: 'What if things are running with us?'

'I think we've been under this tree the whole time!

Everything is the same as it was!'

'Of course!' replied the Queen, 'how was she going to be?'

'Well, in my country, if you run that fast for that long, you usually end up somewhere else.'

'Well, it's a pretty slow country.

Here you have to run as much as possible to stay in the same place.

To get to another place you have to run twice as fast.”

This dialogue, explains Cadaval, could be applied to what has happened in Galicia with its productive fabric.

“While other regions took advantage of the recovery (2014-2019) to grow in a different way than before, aware of the changes that were taking place in the world economy, and clearly opted for R&D&I, Galicia ran, but it did not do so at a faster rate than the others, which explains why a classic economic model survives and with fewer technical and organizational advances than required by the speed of the transformations underway, which the pandemic has also accelerated.

The five-year period of growth has not been used to reinforce the productive fabric or to increase its level of resilience.”

The nationalist Ana Pontón is sure that post-Feijóo Galicia is a worse Galicia than the one the politician from Os Peares (Ourense) found.

“In 13 years he has not solved any country problem: none.

But he has added several: privatizations in health, cuts, collapse of primary care and submission of policies to big

which has meant that these large companies have benefited from our resources.

There is a devastating summary: public debt has doubled without improving public services.

There are 200,000 young people who have emigrated outside the country.

And a state of the Galician language of harassment and demolition by its Government: it is the only language of the State that loses speakers”.

Juan Vieites, president of the Confederation of Employers of Galicia, disagrees: according to him, wealth and employment have been created, and the balance of the Feijóo years is positive "in everything related to socioeconomics."

“He has given something very important for the economy: stability.

And although young people leave because there is a dynamic of knowing things outside, many others have chosen to stay, and have been able to do so”.

Cadaval also refers to stability and balance to mention what he considers a positive aspect of the Xunta de Feijóo.

“In the worst moments of the crisis produced by the Great Recession, the adjustments carried out by the Autonomous Government allowed Galicia to keep its accounts relatively balanced, which translates into a lower debt relative to GDP, with a significant change in trend as of 2011. This differential position allowed the autonomous community not to have to resort to extraordinary liquidity mechanisms - such as the FLA - and thus have greater room for maneuver to dispose of its resources.

And it allows the regional administration to have budgetary stability”, something that partially compensates for a dangerous finding: “Only five sectors —food, beverages, paper,

There is hardly any defense outside his party of the relationship that the Feijóo government maintains with the media, both those private media dependent on institutional advertising and Radio Televisión Galega (CRTVG), the public media that on March 18 turned 200

Black Fridays, 200 weeks of protest dressed in black against information manipulation and the use of radio and television for the benefit of the last president of the Xunta de Galicia

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