The current situation is being entertained by WhatsApp messages from President Sánchez and his former minister and confidant, José Luis Ábalos, which are raising the temperature of the Madrid political cauldron. The content of the messages amounts to nothing more than gossip, seeking to see what the Prime Minister's tone is in private with his confidant, but since the medium is the message, the publication of his words also serves as a warning. Through a proxy diary, Pedro Sánchez is told that his daily life is a constant threat and that close friends and power can become a ticking time bomb.
Meanwhile, in Barcelona, the Catalan government is beginning to experience its first crises and the erosion of its fragile parliamentary majority. Salvador Illa is diligently working on his image, his presence, and the support of the Spanish media. Having emerged as an adversary of the Madrid president, Illa's goal is to become her antithesis, to reduce the animosity toward Catalonia with the prospect of negotiating the new financing system and perhaps to build an alternative to Sánchez for when the time comes.
Grace period
In Catalonia, the grace period has ended, and their partners are making the Generalitat and the City Council sweat for every measure. Whether it's the budgetary credit increase, the tourist tax, or the 30% of the public housing land reserved for the City Council.
If their partners are making them sweat for every measure, the opposition isn't willing to give them breathing room, even on the most sacred issues, such as language. president Illa has managed to sign the National Pact for Language with his investiture partners and the country's main cultural entities, but Junts has made it clear once again that it will not give the socialist president any water. For Puigdemont, it is one thing to negotiate with one's teeth bared in Congress and another to give oxygen to the tenant of the Generalitat of Catalonia. The failure to comply with the amnesty of the president Puigdemont still hampers political relations between parties, as well as the updating and renewal of Junts. The internal silence will not be broken until Puigdemont returns.
Political management has collided this week with the crisis over the handling of the General Directorate for Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA) in the case of a girl in the care of the Generalitat (Catalan Government) who was raped and repeatedly filmed by a network of pedophiles when she was twelve years old. The girl, with an already very complicated life, lived in a juvenile center. The prosecution is seeking 70 years in prison for TLM, a 40-year-old man who turned out to be the mastermind of a massive network of sexual violence against minors and child pornography that has led the courts to open up to three cases. The police operation ended with fifteen arrests and at least eleven identified victims and fourteen unidentified.
This case adds to the investigations by the Anti-Fraud Office and the Public Prosecutors' Offices of Greuges and Comptes announced by this newspaper with publications by Albert Llimós in January and March. These are complaints against two entities that allegedly received public funds intended for the care of children and young people for services that were not provided. The signatures of children who were not assigned places in job placement programs were allegedly forged.
It's clear that the problems at the DGAIA are not new, but the Catalan government has little time to present a credible plan for a complete transformation of the services provided to these 9,000 children at risk of exclusion. This is not an easy issue and requires courage to ensure that it does not fall into the hands of the xenophobes who are gaining ground in the public debate.
Flood of Arrivals
According to the Ombudsman's Office's December 2021 report on the rights of children and adolescents, the DGAIA's budget increased by 39.8% between 2016 and 2020. In fact, the country faced a wave of mass arrivals, which was responded to, unlike what happened in many other autonomous communities. Society demanded that the children crowding into Mossos d'Esquadra police stations be taken in, and the management had to be swift and was not meticulous.
The number of new arrivals to the system fell from 362 in 2015 to 639 in 2016, 1,437 in 2017, 3,710 in 2018, 2,219 in 2019, and 808 in 2020, before recovering to 1,268 in 2021. The administration often finds itself needing to respond to emergency situations in a clean but rapid manner, and it is clear that the administrative machinery is either excessively cumbersome or at risk of being affected by corruption or malpractice. The third sector is no exception. Public policies are needed to guarantee the inclusion and protection of children and adolescents, especially those in vulnerable situations. But we must also ensure that corruption or neglect do not derail citizen support for implementing measures that ensure the effective protection of the rights of children and adolescents, with special attention to those at risk of social exclusion. A lack of social cohesion is a pathway to collective failure.
