Grupo de Análisis sobre Territorios Rurales (GATER) (meaning, The Analysis Group on Rural Lands), which is made up of teachers of five Valencian public universities, elaborated a detailed report in which they support a new rural policy which can be applied to the Valencian Region, to present territorial incentives and to improve public services and governance. Universitat de València professors Javier Esparcia and Jaime Escribano also took place.
In order to examine in an integral way all the policies which affect rural lands and which establish the steps to achieve the best territorial model, ten professors who are part of GATER gathered together with more than seventy experts at the workshop titled: “Towards a new rural and land policy in the Valencian Region. Land incentives, public services and governance”. Here, qualified actors of the rural area -coming from the local and regional government, the local action groups, the civil society and the Rural Businesses- will participate, both in the Valencian Region as for the rest of Spain. The group of experts summarised the main points which should be the new Valencian rural policy.
The group of experts, in one hand, support the implementation of territorial incentives through policies that stimulate economic activities, and through an strategic approach, which include a support decided for the private sector. On the other hand, on the elaborated document they analyse the social component of the territorial development and its instabilities at the Valencian Region by defining the fields of work of a rural social policy in education, health, basic services and public transport. Therefore, experts defend the need of a new rural governance, which articulates social society and local policy, giving great importance to participation, in order to achieve the advancements in territorial co-operation and which rises social capital, raising co-ordination structures and developing some actions of political and spread pedagogy. Finally, they are planning the need of an institutional structure of the rural lands, and in concrete they ask you the role of provincial corporations, which many times, apart from other possible effects, they benefit the lack of scarce patronage networks .
Experts conclude it by analysing the rests for the democracy of 2015-2020 and they also ask for the groups selection which opt for the European funds of rural development (and, if possible, the delimitation of the LEADER areas) not to be carried out by the local and regional elections next month of May, in order to avoid future mortgage of groups with some public actors not coming from local election.
Avoiding patronage system
One of the most critical aspects of the document is the role of the County Councils in the rural development, which according to the document, “they react according to a filter of the financial funds, which correspond to the rural municipalities, but on its way to the Council they become party-politically (gifts) instruments, which they coincide according to the discretional nature of the dominant political party”. To this, “the ordinary cost of the maintenance of such Council as, which turns into a stone that takes away necessary funds, among other important fields, to the same rural territorial development. According Javier Esparcia, full university professor of G eography from Universitat de València and leader of the report together with professors José Mª Álvarez Coque, Raúl Compés and Dionisio Ortíz of Universidad Politécnica, Artur Aparici from Jaume I, and Jaime Escribano from Universitat de València, “we would have to think over the fact of continuity for this institution, as for a regional co-ordination of the municipalities will oblige that the application of the territorial criteria as a technical criteria acquires relevance”.
Likewise, experts point out that through working sessions different voices brought to light the existence of patronage and partisan practices, whose disappearance is vital to improve local governance. “It would be necessary -they say- to give importance to civil society, both in decision-making as in leadership of the projects, which cannot go according the Councils or the conselleria (Departments), that is something that closes the vicious circle of patronage system and the invalidity of grants”.
GATER is made up of professors Artur Aparici, Xavier Gines and Vicent Querol from Universitat Jaume I; Raúl Compés, José Mª García Álvarez-Coque and Dionisio Ortiz from Universitat Politècnica de València; Jaime Escribano and Javier Esparcia from Universitat de València; Antonio Martínez Puche from University of Alacant, and Margarita Brugarolas, from Miguel Hernández University of Elche.
Full document available on:
www.fundacionivifa.wordpress.com/taller-2015/
Last update: 13 de april de 2015 07:00.
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