With a united voice, Alicante Province’s four senior mayors, Alicante, (Luis Barcala), Torrevieja (Eduardo Dolón), Benidorm (Toni Pérez) and Orihuela, Emilio Bascuñana, have come out publicly to ask the Ministry of Health for explanations as to why they have not requested that the Valencian Community pass to Phase 2 of the de-escalation plan, which allows more relief measures for the economy and, therefore, for sectors such as commerce and hospitality.
Each mayor made his request separately, but in the end the message is exactly the same: the people want to know for what reasons the move to phase 2 has not been requested? The Alicante PP made the request along with their coalition partner, Ciudadanos, and both have presented an institutional statement for debate in the next plenary session in which they request that the Conselleria de Sanidad” provides daily, updated and quality information on the main data and indicators of the incidence that the covid-19 is having in Alicante”.
Later, it was the mayor of Torrevieja, the second most important city currently governed by the PP in the province of Alicante. Eduardo Dolón opted to send a letter to the Minister of Health, Ana Barceló, in which he spoke of his great concern about the situation that the productive sectors of the city are going through, especially commerce and hospitality, which have once again seen their expectations cut short with the decision not to move to Phase II of the de-escalation.
The mayor of Orihuela, Emilio Bascuñana, has demanded “to know of the criteria used to determine which territories pass the Phase and who made the decision”, since, as he explained, “this opposition is intolerable, this lack of information contrary to the law of transparency, and is certainly not typical of a democratic system”. He said that he wants to know whether the slight increase in the incidence of the virus, or basic reproduction index, from 0.66 to 0.85 in the Valencian Community, announced by Ana Barceló has also occurred in the Vega Baja Health Departments.
The four mayors have accused the President of the Valencian Generalitat, Ximo Puig, of “drowning” the province by refusing to move to Phase 2 in the region. The recovery that involved the re-opening of shops, hotels and businesses a week ago has been stopped dead in a region that needs help from the Consell and is now only facing obstacles on the part of the Valencian regional government which it is once again abandoning and leaving its inhabitants to their fate.”
They all agreed that the decision to change the sanitary areas in the province was taken without any explanation or founded criteria so that situation in the province of Alicante now resembles that of other areas that are more affected by the coronavirus. “It had nothing to do with the health, social or the economic situation of the Vega Baja region” PP spokesman Adrián Ballester said, “the Generalitat is allied with Pedro Sánchez in making a decision that further damages the Vega Baja and which has not been taken into account.”
