“It is very easy, and also very irresponsible, to change our criteria like the PSOE does.” With these words, yesterday the Councilor for Urban Planning and municipal spokesperson for the Forum, Jesús Martínez Salvador, defended the position of his party in the face of the latest attempt by the PSOE to request a change of direction from the local government regarding the Gijón World Cup project. The socialists announced yesterday that they will ask the Councilor for Economy, the popular Ángela Pumariega, in the next plenary session, about whether the local government has considered any project to reform the stadium other than the one presented by Orlegi and if a project has been prepared to know the cost. and the economic impact of the World Cup for the city, which the PSOE estimates at an increase of 214 million in the local GDP and the creation of 4,000 jobs.
Socialist councilor Marina Pineda assured yesterday in a press conference that the World Cup will have “a multiplier effect for the economy of its venues.” Based “on a Royal Decree of the Central Government.” The councilor stated that “for every euro invested, 4.28 euros of GDP will be generated; and for every million euros, 78 full-time jobs.” “If we accept the figure that Carmen Moriyón has given us of 50 million euros of estimated spending in Gijón, it would be 214 million euros of increase in GDP and almost 4,000 jobs in the municipality,” explained the councilor, who also He highlighted that “the central government has announced a budget of 1,430 million euros for the celebration of the World Cup, of which 750 million are for infrastructure” and made reference to the agreements recently signed by the Zaragoza City Council with Adif and Aena to improve their rail and air infrastructure for the World Cup.
Pineda asks the local government for a “rigorous analysis” of the economic impact of the World Cup. And for this reason he will ask Pumariega in the next plenary session if the City Council has commissioned any “serious” report of this type and if the City Council has presented any financing plan. Also if any alternative reform plan for the stadium has been studied and if he has taken into account that El Molinón “will require significant amounts of money in the coming years to guarantee its conservation.”
“Both in the opposition and in the government, in Forum we have always maintained the same criterion: that without knowing how much the World Cup was going to cost and who was going to pay for it, we should not play with the money of the people of Gijón,” said Martínez Salvador yesterday. , after being consulted by this newspaper. “It is very easy and also very irresponsible to change criteria like the PSOE does, a party that long ago stopped thinking about the city to focus on its acronyms and the personalisms that accompany them,” added the Urban Planning councillor.
The PP, its government partner, shows the same criteria. “The Popular Party has at all times shown its interest and enthusiasm for Gijón to become the headquarters. We believe that it is a unique opportunity for promotion and visibility. That said, in this process we have found many unknowns to resolve, especially regarding referring to the enormous investment necessary and the implementation of the conditions imposed by FIFA for the specific situation of Gijón, as happens, to give just one example, with the commercial basement of the stadium,” argues the vice mayor, Ángela Pumariega, who accuses neglect of the Principality and Central Government.
In the same line as the local government, they appear on the other side of the ideological arc of the Plenary IU and Podemos. “Gijón has many needs, and the World Cup is not one of them. The terms in which, from the beginning, Orlegi proposed the project, together with the requirements of FIFA, also make it unaffordable from an economic point of view for a City Hall like ours. We neither can afford it nor should we allow it. We simply do not need it,” argues the spokesman for Izquierda Unida, Javier Suárez Llana, for whom “the World Cup debate is an outdated debate.”
In Podemos they are also clear about it. “I hope to be able to bring the World Cup, but it is not worth what it costs. The documents sent by FIFA leave no room for doubt, and the reports from municipal services are conclusive. Signing what they ask of us commits us to assuming crazy expenses, 50 millions of tickets plus what may correspond to us from the renovation of the stadium,” explains the councilor of the purple formation, Olaya Suárez, who applauds the management made by Moriyón in this matter: “He is acting with a responsibility and seriousness that we do not see in FIFA nor in those who draw great dreams but want their son-in-law to build them and the rest of us to pay for them.
Only the Vox councilor, Sara Álvarez Rouco, is the only one who shows an approach similar to that of the PSOE. “Organizing a World Cup entails very demanding costs and obligations that not all city councils can assume. The important thing would be to know the economic return that it would bring to the city,” the councilor began by explaining, giving as an example what happened in other places: “The “FIFA asks for a lot, but what is built, also a lot, would stay. Other Spanish cities are betting on it, so some potential benefit must exist,” he explains.
Despite the firm rejection shown by the local government and the position shown by the rest of the municipal groups, Sporting tries to keep the flame of the candidacy alive. “If Asturias wants, Asturias has the World Cup. We have until July 31” to move it forward, said the executive president, David Guerra, on Sunday, in the first interview given to a media outlet after the municipal shelving of the World Cup project.
2024-03-05 03:09:00
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