January 2020. The first coalition government was formed in Spain in 80 years. The PSOE leads the executive with only 120 MPs. United we can contribute 35 (today, 34). A total of 155, to 21 for an absolute majority. The PP, then led by Pablo Casado, thought that the parliamentary weakness would fall too quickly on Pedro Sánchez. He said so not infrequently. But almost three years later, the Congress approved the third consecutive general budget with a consolidated majority of 190 deputies. And all this despite the flagging opposition, now led by Alberto Núñez Feijoo, who insists on pointing to an alleged “instability” that has not been confirmed in the votes.
The government of PSOE and Unidas Podemos not only managed to implement a third public report, which has not happened since the absolute majority of Mariano Rajoy’s PP in the middle of the last decade. This Thursday, in a marathon session that ended at dawn on Friday, the lower house also gave permission and sent to the Senate a bill on new emergency taxes on electricity companies and banks, in addition to temporary solidarity. A large wealth tax.
A cooperation law will also be approved, which will also take the path of the upper house. And the star of the day, apart from the budgets: allowing a process to repeal the crime of sedition.
The PP is trying to make the most of the citizen’s rejection of the reform of the criminal law code, which, however, is not known to go to the polls. “Spain will not agree in a few months,” the party leadership lamented.
The end of the political year, which will lead to 2023, which will distribute almost all the institutional power of the country, confirmed the good legislative health of the government and the fruitfulness of the parliamentary alliance woven after the inauguration, despite its apparent domesticity. problems.
The vote, which appointed Pedro Sánchez to a second presidential term, ended with a very close result: 167 votes in favor, 165 against and 18 abstentions. This Thursday, the executive authority will never be behind 187 deputies in voting on various parts of the budget. A number that is regularly repeated not only in previous public reports, but also in various legislative projects.
Among the favorable votes are those of the two government forces, Basque and Catalan nationalists and independents, as well as more conservative regionalist forces from Cantabria and Teruel to the Canary Islands.
And all this despite the pandemic, the war and its consequences, the many internal problems of the coalition, unprecedented since the restoration of democracy, and the Congress more fragmented than ever, with provincial, autonomous parties, with an expected seat in the Constitutional Court. of Alberto Rodríguez) and the extreme right, which emphasize some transcendental debates. Without going any further, the budgets themselves and Macho attack the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero.
Since 2020, the government has undergone two changes that have reconfigured its political leadership, always with Pedro Sánchez at the helm. First, with the release of Carmen Calvo, Jose Luis Abalos and Ivan Redondo. Along the way, the PSOE had up to three members of parliament and as many in the organic party. The second crisis occurred with the departure of Pablo Iglesias, who was replaced by Yolanda Diaz. The relay, which did not go well, led to one of the biggest crises the armed political space has experienced since 2014 around Podemos.
They changed the negotiators and the subjects of negotiation. From responding to the health crisis, first socially and economically, to normalizing relations with (and in) Catalonia later. From the reaction to price escalation caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to feminist laws that, like the only yes is yes or trans law, have sparked intense and public controversy within and outside the coalition.
Tensions have risen in the authorities in recent days over a new norm promoted by the Ministry of Equality to revise down the punishments for abusers and pedophiles, although the tone in recent hours. The division between Yolanda Díaz and Podemos has also grown, worrying the PSOE, which knows it needs space on the left to hold on to power.
But it is the attacks on Irene Montero these days, especially on Wednesday, that could change public opinion’s doubts about the government’s problems, such as The law is only yes is yes. It “represents” the PP, which is a partner of the extreme right in various communities and town halls, and which, according to all polls, would not be able to govern without Vox.
Unfulfilled marks of PP
And despite everything, the government will be able to finish the legislature in peace. It will be Pedro Sánchez, with his decision, who will determine when the general election will be held, the deadline for which is December 2023. That same Tuesday, Feijoo assured the junta in a press release together with the president, Alfonso Rueda: “In the face of fear and daily events, Galicia represents stability and certainty.”
It is true that the PP has dominated Galicia almost uninterruptedly since the 1980s and continuously since Feijo himself restored the Xunta in 2009. But in the rest of the autonomous communities, which his party has ruled since 2019, there have been no-confidence motions, disbanding. Parliaments and calling for elections.
This was the case, for example, in the failure of the no-confidence vote against Murcia, which ended with the popular president, Fernando López Miras, being classified as a deserter by Congress. Or in Madrid, where Isabel Díaz Ayuso brought forward the elections with exactly what happened in Murcia, to get rid of Ciudadanos, who disappeared from the assembly. Nearing the end of his fourth year in office, Ayuso has only managed to approve a few budgets for this 2022 year. And the 2023 budget is still not guaranteed, despite having an almost absolute majority. Or in Castilla y León, where Alfonso Fernández Maniueco also disbanded the Cortes to sink Ciudadanos and found a coalition government with the extreme right of the Vox.
Ayuso is one of the “sufficient and wide majorities” that PP secretary-general Kuka Gamara called on regional leaders last October to “give stability” to regional and municipal governments after the May 2023 elections.
The PP has sold Feijo since the start of his term as a guarantor of “stability” to a central executive which, according to the story, has been plunged into total chaos. After this week’s plenary session, the story has less support than in recent weeks.
Source: El Diario
