  |
Bashing the PSOE - and causing undeserved hardship for the people of Gibraltar
|
By David Eade
Unless you grabbed your copy of Panorama hot off the press on Friday morning by the time you read this the mayor of La Línea, Alejandro Sánchez, should be well along the way on his walk from the border town to Algeciras.
Curiously although he sets off to demand more support for his municipality from the socialist government in Madrid he does so without the major support of his town's residents. Indeed ASCTEG that speaks for the cross border workers has accused him of using the tactics of the Franco era.
Sánchez might also suffer some rowdy heckling as he walks along the prom in La Línea from his own town hall workers. They have still to be paid all their June salary and might have preferred it if their first citizen had spent the day behind his desk sorting out their owed cash plus the July salaries which are about to fall due.
Of course his Francoist stance has earned him the support of the centre right Partido Popular at both local and national level but that has nothing to do with reality. It ignores the corruption and mismanagement of the local PP administration that has landed the border town with an unemployment roll of over 10,000 and left the town hall's coffers empty. All Rajoy and Co are interested in is bashing the PSOE government and causing undeserved hardship for the people of the Rock. Some cross border tension also adds spice to the PP anti-Gibraltar recipe.
However a sense of reality has been provided by the Asociacion de Trabajadores Españoles en Gibraltar or better known as ASCTEG. It wants the public to know that it defends the rights of all who pass through the border every day regardless of their nationality.
It says the actions of Sánchez and his government team will affect the mobility of many workers and those from La Línea who go to work in Gibraltar. ASCTEG also points out it harms the families of those workers and businesses on both sides of the border.
The association says it does not want a return to the policies of the Franco era which proved disastrous for the Spanish workers in La Línea who lost their jobs.
It blames both the Spanish and British governments for not doing more to solve the problems at the border but adds that it is disgraceful that the mayor of La Línea should seek to target the workers, their families, businesses as well as Spanish and European travellers. More importantly, when La Línea has a jobless toll of 10,000 plus, ASCTEG is sharp enough to realise that the mayor is also endangering the jobs of the over 4,000 people from the border town who work in Gibraltar every day and the incomes of their families.
ASCTEG is totally against Sánchez's harebrained scheme to place a toll on travellers wishing to enter Gibraltar. It has also stated its opposition to any scheme or policy that could prejudice the good social, employment and commercial relations that currently exist between the two communities on either side of the border. ASCTEG would like to see the mayor of La Línea represented at the Trilateral talks to speak for the town and for them but thoroughly rejects his Francoist stance.
Ever since Sánchez started his current actions, which he insists are aimed against Madrid and not Gibraltar, he has earned the derision of those on both sides of the border. The trouble is he now bathes in the glow of approval from Mariano Rajoy and the Partido Popular so this nut might yet prove harder to crack.
|
|
|
|
