The PP and Vox are deepening the application of “national priority” within the Valencian regulatory framework, following the approval of the Generalitat’s Budget Law last Wednesday, which for the first time introduces into a legal text in Spain the principle advocated by the far-right. Both parties have agreed in Les Corts on several amendments, such as the one that contemplates “the exclusion from access to structural social benefits and services for people in an irregular administrative situation, limiting their access exclusively to cases of vital urgency that proceed in accordance with the legal system.”
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This is one of the amendments registered this Friday afternoon by the two groups, partners in Les Corts, to the Law on Fiscal, Administrative and Financial Management, and Organization Measures of the Generalitat, better known as the accompanying law. This regulation is approved each year along with the budgets to modify several laws at once and apply the Consell’s policy. It will be voted on in committee and in plenary next Monday and Friday, respectively. The PP is the majority group with 40 seats, but needs 10 more seats to reach an absolute majority. Vox has 13 deputies.
In one of the proposals signed by the spokespersons for the PP and Vox, Nando Pastor and José María Llanos, respectively, they establish that “the Consell will approve the necessary regulatory provisions to develop the conditions of access to all public aid, subsidies and benefits, inspired by the principle of national priority, which seeks the preferential allocation of public resources to those who maintain a real, lasting and verifiable rootedness in the Valencian Community.”
Thus, as agreed by PP and Vox, the regulatory development will contemplate, “in any case,” a “reinforced minimum period of rootedness, registration and connection with the territory; the linking of access to public aid, subsidies and benefits to the contribution history, permanence and contribution to the maintenance of the system” and, finally, “the exclusion of people in an irregular administrative situation” from “structural” social benefits and services.
In this same amendment, the two groups include in Law 3/2019, on inclusive social services, as a general and transversal principle, that “the priority allocation of public resources will be sought for those who maintain a real, lasting and verifiable rootedness,” with the aim of “ensuring the applicant’s effective and emotional connection to the territory.” In another amendment, they establish that access to the Valencian inclusion income “will be inspired by access to national priority,” with the same objectives cited above.
According to them, “the habitual residence requirement will be considered met when registration in any Valencian municipality is recorded” during one of these two minimum periods: “three years continuously immediately prior to the date of application” or “ten years within the 30 immediately prior to the application, continuously or interrupted,” according to Europa Press.
In educational matters, both groups establish that school canteens must “guarantee equality” in the food served to students, “unless alternatives must be offered for medical reasons.”
On the other hand, PP and Vox establish among the obligations of civil servants to “keep their face substantially uncovered throughout the working day and when attending to the public, not allowing the wearing of garments or accessories that substantially conceal it,” except in cases of medical-health prescription or occupational risk regulations. They add that failure to comply with this obligation, which seeks to prohibit the niqab and burka used by the Muslim population, is a serious offense.
Along the same lines, they include “as an objective reason for denying access and permanence” in public establishments to people who wear “garments or accessories that substantially conceal the face, preventing visual identification or facial recognition.”
Appeal to the Constitutional Court
After learning about these amendments, the Compromís spokesperson, Joan Baldoví, denounces that “once again we see how the PP kneels before Vox and agrees on measures that go against the most basic social consensuses.” “Valencians are not a racist or xenophobic people. We are a dignified and inclusive people. And we know that our problem is not with our neighbors who were born elsewhere, but with the PP and Vox politicians who give jobs to their friends and distribute public housing among their militants,” he states in declarations sent to the media. For all these reasons, Baldoví announces that Compromís will promote an appeal of unconstitutionality against the accompanying law “and all the cuts in rights agreed upon by PP and Vox.”
For his part, for the PSPV spokesperson, José Muñoz, these amendments represent “a new step in the racist and xenophobic drift against migrants in the Valencian Community” because PP and Vox intend to “extend the so-called ‘national priority,’ institutionalized apartheid, to the rest of the legal system of the Valencian Community and, specifically, to social laws, turning a person’s origin into a criterion for deciding who has more rights and who has fewer.” “This is called institutionalized discrimination and cruelty,” he emphasizes in a statement.
“The aberration goes to the extreme that, through the amendments, the Consell is tasked with developing a regulation for the principle of national priority, that is, to draft the Regulation of Institutionalized Racism in the Generalitat. It is repugnant,” he denounces, and warns that “the weakness of Pérez Llorca and his continuous concessions to the far-right are turning the Valencian Community into a laboratory of inhumanity.”
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