The parliamentary framework of this new session, after the added blow to the instability – already chronic in Madrid – that has meant the investiture of Salvador Illa as president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, is forcing us to do changes in the opposition strategies of all parties.
In the right-wing sphere, the conclusion they have reached in Genoa is that It is time to shift the axes of politics against the head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, and start playing more in the field of alternatives.
This is something that some leaders with weight in the popular formation had been demanding for some time, arguing that By the last general elections in July 2023, this avenue of concentrating the entire opposition on the anti-Sanchez discourse had been exhausted.
For this new quarter, The PP’s “legislative” team is working with the instruction to look for ways to reverse Sánchez’s policy on social issueswith two main objectives: housing and conciliation.
The intention is to bring proposals to Parliament that can garner the support of the current partners of the Government, so that defeats for Moncloa accumulate, week after week.
He wants to bring proposals to Congress that can garner the support of the Government’s partners.
Control of the Board of the Congress of Deputies, the governing body of the Chamber, gives the PSOE the power to stop the processing of bills presented by the opposition: if the latter were capable of passing laws against the Executive’s criteria, there would be no strategy, not even Sánchez’s, capable of stopping the collapse of the coalition.
But, in any case, even if they cannot pass laws, a framework in which Moncloa accumulates working weeks in the Lower House that are marked by defeats is a cesspool for any Executive and one from which it is very difficult to escape without corrosive wear and tear.
The explanation given by the popular leadership is that the Amnesty Law is already on track, in the hands of the judges and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and that this makes it convenient to give this turn to the opposition strategy in order to connect even emotionally with all those voters who may feel disappointed with the policy that the socialists are carrying out.
With this idea, they have targeted young people, who are the most affected by housing or work-life balance problems, for example. In this last point, the PP is putting its foot in when employers and unions are negotiating the reduction of the working day.
To bring the debate closer to their field, they use, for example, the Randstad “Employer Brand” Report, a document that maintains that 50 percent of Spanish workers leave companies due to the lack of conciliation, and also data from the INE, which confirm that the birth rate fell again in 2023 by two percent, thus confirming the downward trend of the last decade that was only interrupted in 2014.
Furthermore, in 2023 Spain stood out as the European country with the most births to mothers aged 40 or older.
It focuses on young people, but also on voters disappointed with PSOE policies
Taxation is another area where, in theory, Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party could have room to bring positions closer to PNV and Junts, but there is a greater lack of confidence in the possibility of forming alliances.
Right now, the Treasury is working to find a way to convert the levies on banks, energy companies (with the bonuses negotiated by the Basque nationalists) and large estates into taxes, and permanent ones.
They must be law, but given the difficulty of passing a regulation in this parliamentary situation, the Government may be tempted to sneak this technically complex measure into a law already in process or with the transposition of a European directive with the force of law, as is the case, for example, of the one pending before the Congress of Deputies on the establishment of a complementary tax to guarantee a minimum global level of taxation for multinational groups and large national groups.
In terms of taxes, the coalition government can use the mechanism of bending the will of the Catalan separatists, including Junts, by offering them the same exemptions for their territory that they already negotiated with the PNV for the Basque Country.
And let it be in the rest of Spain where its design of the highest taxation for the “rich” is put into effect. To the extent that the Government has everything in place, even though it has already begun budget talks with PNV and Junts, the PP has ground to try out maneuvers to approach these parties, which in the best of cases would be only temporary, but which will always be useful to achieve their political objective if they leave the PSOE in the minority.
This construction of an alternative, demanded by some baronies of the party for some time and which will be presented next week, is consolidated as a path for the coming months in parallel with the idea that Sánchez is not going to fall in the medium term also taking hold in the popular executive. There are those who present it with even less optimism for their interests: “This is going to take a long time.”