Ana Pastor, Vice-President of the Congress of Deputies and spokesperson for the PP in the Commission for Reconstruction, inaugurated the first post-COVID PROA Observatory on Thursday 23 July with a talk on the activity and results of the aforementioned commission, whose documents were voted on the previous day in the Lower House. The event, whose aim, in the words of Lucía Casanueva, managing partner together with Valvanuz Serna of PROA, was for everyone to take away "one or two ideas for reflection on how to improve as a society", was attended by a group of managers, entrepreneurs and representatives of associations from different sectors.
The Vice-President of Congress, who was introduced and accompanied during her presentation by Mario Garcés, deputy spokesperson of the PP in the Congress of Deputies, wanted to make it clear that "the great crises of humanity have always had to do with pathogens", after pointing out some of the mistakes that the Executive made in the management of the pandemic. Of the agreements reached, she was proud of the 61 proposals that - "working very hard", she said - her group managed to include in the health measures document, among which she particularly highlighted the creation of the National Public Health Agency, given that she considered that "one of the lessons learned from this crisis" has been that the public health system must be strengthened, an area she knows well, given that she is a doctor by training and was a civil servant by competitive examination in it, as well as later becoming Minister of Health. She also added as important points the employment stability plan for healthcare workers, the technological transformation of the system, the change in the organisational model so that there is a connection between autonomous communities and the reinforcement of the foreign health system. He also stressed that all of this should be provided with "sufficient resources".
Regarding the lack of support for the social proposals, the main reason for this was the non-inclusion of subsidised education in the distribution of reconstruction aid. This section was rejected by the House on Wednesday, given that, for different reasons, apart from the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox, parties such as the PNV, JpC, Bildu, CC, Foro, Navarra Suma and CUP also voted against it.
The PP spokeswoman on the Reconstruction Commission - "a word I don't like, I would have preferred it to be called Recovery", she said - who argues that in politics one has to be "moderate in form and forceful in substance", regretted, on the other hand, not having been able to reach agreements on the measures for economic reactivation. "There was no way to reach an understanding," he said, referring to the rejection by the representatives of the parties in government of tax cuts, fiscal consolidation and the reform of commercial legislation.
Mario Garcés went into more detail on the package of measures on the European Union, the other document on which there was agreement. A spirit, that of reaching agreements, which, according to Garcés, was a direct request from Pablo Casado, the president of the PP, to his representatives in the Commission. Likewise, he admitted that reaching agreements in the EU section "was the easiest thing to do". In this case, he highlighted the acceptance of requests such as a short-term plan for the absorption of community resources or the claim to Spain's historic right over Gibraltar, among others.
The deputy spokesman for the PP in Congress regretted that on this occasion it has not been possible to emulate the Moncloa Pacts of 1977, because, in his opinion, the axis of the Government tends to the left and not to the centre, and because of the lack of pragmatism of many current politicians in comparison with those of the Transition. At the same time, he considered that there is a "dumbing down", a "vulgarisation" and a "professionalisation" of politics, something that is "a reflection of the society in which we live".
The speeches aroused a great deal of interest among the audience, who during question time were interested in issues such as the regulation of teleworking, the role of the PP in the remainder of the legislature, the role of civil society and the situation of the political parties.
Both Pastor and Garcés answered these questions with a passionate defence of love for Spain, liberalism, constitutional values, pragmatism and the promotion of relations with Latin America.
The PROA Observatories are stable discussion forums with the participation of prominent executives, politicians and professionals. They are born with the vocation of being a laboratory of ideas where a genuine dialogue is fostered to debate current business issues, as well as corporate reputation, brand and public affairs as important elements for the improvement of companies.
Among the personalities who have participated in these meetings are the economist Manuel Conthe; the former Minister of Education, Culture and Sport José Ignacio Wert; the writer and priest Pablo D'Ors; the Director of External Communication of Deloitte, Antonio Belmonte; the Director of Communication and Institutional Relations of El Corte Inglés, José Luis González-Besada; the High Commissioner for Marca España Carlos Espinosa de los Monteros; the writer and journalist Pilar Urbano; the General Director of Información y Control de Publicaciones S.A. (OJD), Manuel Sala; the former president of Red Eléctrica de España Jordi Sevilla, the current mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, the former minister Cristóbal Montoro and Raimundo Herráiz, manager of the Madrid 112 Emergency Coordination Centre during 11M, among others.