Benidorm will not give up its savings

"The Benidorm City Council is not going to give up its remaining treasury." This is how resounding the mayor of Benidorm, Toni Pérez, has expressed himself.

"We are not going to give our savings to the central government because they are the savings generated by the efforts of people from Benidorm and the management of the City Council in recent years," insisted the mayor.

In this sense and with determination, Toni Pérez emphatically emphasized that “our responsibility and our priority are the nearly 70,000 people from Benidorma, families, workers and companies of the city; and the municipal resources, their savings, are theirs and for them ”.

The mayor recalled that the request of the municipalism, of the city councils, was and is "that we be financed additionally and unconditionally after having been assisting in the front line above our competencies and responsibilities", in clear reference to the support work to basic needs of people and families that, since the beginning of the pandemic, the state of alarm, the cessation of activities and confinement has been developed by the Benidorm City Council and other local corporations in Spain.

Toni Pérez recalled that it is "now more than five months" that we have been dragged this situation and it is already more than necessary "an extraordinary additional financing that provides resources and liquidity from the State." And he insisted, referring to the Government: "pretending that the municipalities are the ones that we give our savings, against our liquidity, so that they can then return them to us in 15 years is a real joke"

The mayor, from a position of solidity, has pointed out that "Benidorm is not going to give its savings for reasons of substance, but also in form" and in that sense he has addressed the President of the Government recalling that "Sánchez has broken the unity of the FEMP and municipalism with its proposal to appropriate the remaining treasury of the municipalities. Toni Pérez has abounded in this aspect: "his claim supposes an inadmissible cut to the policies of local governments".

Defending municipalism, dialogue and consensus, the mayor of Benidorm has indicated that "the under-financing of the municipalities of Spain is solved by sitting at a table where you only have to demand that the Government comply with what is promised and address fair local financing."

And since the Organic Law of Budgetary Stability is the crux of the matter, Toni Pérez recalled that "it is the same law that allows us all year after year to invest surpluses in financially sustainable investments." And the mayor of Benidorm goes further with the current law: "this same year the Government, faced with the requirements of municipalities, enabled 20% of our surplus to attend social action in our municipalities, with our savings", which shows that if There is a legal formula to make it viable for us to invest in serving families, freelancers, businesses and companies in the municipality with the remaining 80%.

Thus, with this liberalizing measure, the Benidorm City Council already had 100% of that 20% released by the government, which meant having more than € 1,424,000 that we used directly, by means of a reality scale, to help families in the first moments of the crisis.

To point out the financial health of the Benidorm City Council and what the Executive's proposal would mean, Toni Pérez recalled that “Benidorm also anticipated the settlement of the 2012 Adjustment Plan and today it has 5.7 million euros that is not going to yield to the Government ”.

And the mayor went further and pointed out that the law itself can make the municipal disposition of funds viable: “of course 100% of this surplus can be released by the Government of Spain in accordance with the law so that this amount can be managed. by the municipalities ”. With this, he concluded “the fault lies not with the Law, but rather that far from having political will by the Government of Spain, what there is is one more attempt to infer local autonomy, seizing savings that, in this case, They are from the town of Benidorm ”.

Already in the plenary session of July 27, the motion of the Municipal Group of the Popular Party went ahead, urging the Government of Spain to respect and guarantee the autonomy of local entities for the management of public money, and to respond to the request of the City Councils so that the Spending Rule is made more flexible, thus favoring that they could have 100% of their Treasury remnants to fight against the negative effects of Covid-19.

The motion included that any legislative amendment that affects the autonomy of local entities be validated by the Congress of Deputies or the governing bodies of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP); and it expressed the “profound rejection” of Benidorm City Council “to any measure aimed at appropriating the savings accumulated by residents of the Spanish municipalities”.