Madrid. The president of Iberdrola, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, branded as “fools” the Spanish consumers who have contracted the electricity bill in the so-called “regulated rate”, which in turn allows them to have access to public aid for families more vulnerable granted by the Spanish State.
These are more than ten million homes, which represents more than 40 percent of the total market, and which are at the expense of fluctuations in the price of electricity, which in recent months has been at the highest levels heights of history.
Given the changes, but above all the turbulence in the price of electricity, Spanish consumers have gradually been modifying their contract conditions with the different companies supplying the service, which are mainly five: Iberdrola, Naturgy, Endesa, Repsol and Total Energies. Just a year ago, the vast majority – more than 80 percent – had contracted the regulated market rate, that is, it is conditioned to the wholesale sale of the energy resources needed to produce electricity, such as gas or renewable energies. renewable. This invoice finally fixes its price on the most expensive input on the wholesale market, which in recent months has been gas and which has skyrocketed prices like never before, reaching the price of a megawatt hour (MWh) of 700 euros.
In this context, the president of Iberdrola, who has campaigned against the rescue plan of the Spanish government, of the socialist Pedro Sánchez, to lower the price of electricity, launched these harsh statements against consumers of the regulated rate. That’s what he said, literally: “Only the fools who continue with the regulated rate set by the Government follow that price”, in reference to the cost set by the wholesale market.
Sánchez Galán did not take into account that the majority of consumers, more than 10 million, who have this rate is also for bureaucratic reasons, since it is a requirement of the government to be recipients of humanitarian aid from the State, such as the bonus social, discounts on the cost of the bill for households in vulnerable situations and other types of regional and municipal subsidies.
“80 percent of Spaniards do not pay the pool price and are paying less than in 2018 because taxes have been lowered,” said Galán, who once again demanded that the government change its strategy in its plan to reduce the price of electricity. light, which consists of the recognition by the European Union (EU) of the “Iberian exceptionality”, which will allow a cheaper price of electricity to be set, but which is still pending for the Spanish Executive to send its detailed proposal to the European institutions for their approval or modification. The process began at the end of March, being processed urgently given the dramatic situation of millions of households, but approval has not yet progressed and the plan is still up in the air.