We close an intense week of parliamentary debates in which our senators Narvay Quintero and María del Mar Julios, together with the writer, have opened several fronts on issues that highlight the growing distance between the policies dictated by the State Government and the demands raised by our Autonomous Community.
That the Ministry of Agriculture has set a quota of 34 tons of bluefin tuna for the Canarian artisanal fleet, which will be expanded to 100 through the provision fund, is perhaps the most graphic example of the promises made by the Popular Party and how they remain on paper when it comes time to carry them out. It is an insult to the 1,200 Canarian families who depend on the activity of the 246 tuna vessels that the Government assigns us 1.21 percent of the quota corresponding to Spain, despite the fact that our fishermen meet more requirements than those who fish in the Mediterranean. I am referring to environmental, historical, economic or social criteria.
It is inadmissible that a single ship, as Quintero denounced, is allocated a quota of 200 tons, that is, twice the amount that Canarian boats will have to distribute. Such is the absurdity of the distribution made by the Government, published this week in the BOE, that the European Union has appointed an official to investigate whether the distribution made by Spain complies with the new community regulations. We will not wait for the result of the investigation and will ask our partners in the European Parliament to demand responsibilities now.
María del Mar Julios, who in just two weeks has done much more than other senators from her island, Gran Canaria, saw last week how the Minister of Development, the same one who had met with the airlines to ask them to reduce air fares in the same proportion as the fall in the price of oil, retracted in plenary and assured her that her department could not articulate any measure to contain prices. Nothing new in the modus operandis of a Government that often rows in the opposite direction from what it promises to citizens.
More regrettable was seeing how the PP senators, including the Canarian ones, overturned an amendment defended by Julios herself so that the Government would commit to rescuing the special employment plans for the Canary Islands that, in just over three years, have been disappearing from the accounts of the Ministry of Employment and Education.
In my case, it was my turn to attend the appearance of the Secretary of State for Infrastructure in which he provided a flood of figures to justify the privatization of AENA. And he did so despite the fact that it was the Minister of Development who should have done so, whom we asked in October 2013, more than a year and a half ago, to explain in the Chamber a process that, for the moment, has involved the sale of 49% of the capital of the public airport network.
The IPO has put an important part of the company's capital on a platter for vulture funds. Funds that will speculate unscrupulously with the future of our airports thanks to an operation in which the Popular Party has once again been left alone, even with the opposition of the National Markets and Competition Commission. Haste makes waste in this type of operation and the Government's speed, which also omitted that the Statutes of Autonomy of the Canary Islands, the Basque Country and Catalonia reserve for these territories the management of airports of general interest in the event that the State does not reserve the same, has already caused the Supreme Court to accept the appeal filed by the Canary Islands.
First they said that they were privatizing AENA because its debts were unsustainable and its management had to be improved. False. The company closed 2014 with 1.8 billion euros in profit. Enough to assume the debt incurred. Today it is already the second largest company in the world in its sector and the first in Europe. The Government has shown that its only priority is to raise more funds, regardless of their origin, and today the hard core is made up of speculative vulture funds. Is that the way to provide stability?.
For the Canary Islands, airports are not an instrument to make money, for us they are the most powerful elements of our economy because we live on connectivity and the tourism sector. Instruments with which AENA earned 320 million euros in 2013 and that now, with the entry of private capital, are at the mercy of the decisions of its new partners. Can Fomento guarantee that investments such as the expansion of the runways of Lanzarote and El Hierro, the entry into operation of the new terminal of Tenerife South, the new runway of Gando or the extension of the Fuerteventura schedule will be made?
We are just three representatives of CC in the Cortes Generales. Our voices contrast with the deafening silence of the senators and deputies of the PP. As the Secretary of State for Infrastructure said, what the PP cares about is the defense of the "Spain brand", for us the Canary Islands.
Ana Oramas, deputy of the Canarian Coalition
