- On 1 January “we will lay the first stone of our transformation. We will take the first step towards a New Valencian Renaissance”. Ximo Puig.
The ‘president’ of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, chose to say goodbye to 2020, the “most difficult” year, at the historic headquarters of the University of Valencia, in Calla La Nau, to emphasise the importance of science, education and of Europe, and the essence of the thought of the humanist Lluís Vives, whose statue is precisely in the cloister of the institution.
This is the third time that Puig has addressed Valencians on New Year’s Eve from outside the Palau de la Generalitat after Orihuela (Alicante), at the birthplace of the poet Miguel Hernández and the Cabriel Valley, a natural area declared a biosphere reserve by Uncesco.
Puig despide el “año fatídico” con la vista puesta en la década “más decisiva” y animando a “ponernos en pie y despegar”
Puig dismissed 2020 as a “fateful” year, the “most difficult” of our life, but with an eye on the hope that opens with the vaccine and in the “most decisive” decade to come, where he claims that it is time for “management, efficiency and ‘optimism'”, and in which, as he has said, Valencians “do not just want to get up” after the pandemic but “rise and take off.”
He remembered the dead and sick from the coronavirus, the “sadness” of these months and he has shared his “affection and a heartfelt hug” with the 2,800 Valencian families who have lost a loved one.
He also thanked the effort that Valencian society is making, a people that have proven to be immensely strong, prudent and determined”.
The priority, in these difficult months ahead, is to save lives, save jobs and save families. We are facing a historic opportunity to achieve it,” he said.
“The most worrisome”, together with health, is job creation but, for this, the Valencian Community will receive from Europe “five times more resources in the next just 3 years, than all the European funds we have received in the last decade and a half “.
“It is an unprecedented situation,” said Puig, who argued that it should translate into the creation of 90,000 jobs in the next three years in the Valencian Community, which will be quality jobs associated with knowledge, the new industry, the sustainability of new energies and digitization.
Therefore, he predicted that, starting from 1 January “we will lay the first stone of our transformation. We will take the first step towards a New Valencian Renaissance”.
