The purpose of today’s participation in the Commission of Citizen Appearances and Human Rights of the Aragonese Cortes has been to inform the deputies of a new territorial development model to successfully combat depopulation, based on the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and its agency Highland and Islands Enterprise (HIE)
The Network of Southern Sparsely Populated Areas has called for political consensus on a serious issue such as depopulation, which for years has lacked connection and closeness to the rural environment by governments and parliaments
Request political consensus, coordination and legislative changes in favor of the rural environment and report on the Territorial Development. These have been the keys to the appearance this morning of SSPA in the Cortes of Aragón, specifically in the Commission of Citizen Appearances and Human Rights.
On the one hand, the representatives of SSPA from Teruel – Carlos Torre, president of the Confederation of Employers of Teruel (CEOE TERUEL), Juan Carlos Escuder, president of the Intersectorial Association of Autonomous of the Provincial of Teruel (CEAT TERUEL) and José Antonio Guillén, representative of the Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises of Teruel (CEPYME TERUEL) – have exposed a new model of territorial development to successfully combat depopulation. This is the one that has been launched in the north of Scotland by the territorial development agency (Highlands and Islands Enterprise HIE), an organization created in 1965 with the mission of removing from its territory the situation of demographic and economic decline in which It had been for centuries, something comparable to that still living in the areas that make up the SSPA network: Cuenca, Soria and Teruel in Spain and two regions of Croatia and Greece.
In addition, SSPA has requested consensus to all political groups in the fight against depopulation, which in the words of their representatives “for years coordination, sensitivity and closeness of the administrations have lacked, with a great absence of connection with the rural by all governments and parliaments. “
In their speech, these representatives have indicated that the resources that have been allocated to policies against depopulation have not yielded any positive results, according to the population and wealth statistics of these territories.
The Agency of Territorial Development for which the SSPA bet coordinates the funds of the different administrations since it is not so much a problem of money as of doing things well with those funds. “We do not need more money. We need to spend it in another way,” they said. “We want to go un the same direction in a local, provincial, regional and national level.”
SSPA is continuing to work with the objective of involving the European institutions in the fight against depopulation, in order to achieve recovery and demographic, economic and social development through appropriate approaches and practices.