One year after 23J, the Government is becoming aware of its profound weakness and is suffering the most resounding parliamentary defeat of its entire mandate. The fallacy of the progressive majority that supports Pedro Sánchez has been shown in all its crudeness in the “macroplenum” with which the Executive wanted to close the session period before the summer break. It also wanted to do so as an attempt at political reinforcement and giving oxygen to the legislature, demonstrating that, despite the devilish fit of political pieces, viability is assured. Nothing could be further from the truth. Without Junts there is no arithmetic and Carles Puigdemont’s party, who are relegated in the negotiations in Catalonia, wanted to show that in the governability of Spain they are decisive and everything depends on their support. A reminder, just a few hours before Pedro Sánchez and Pere Aragonés are photographed in Barcelona to close the last transfers agreed with the Generalitat on the Minimum Vital Income.
The separatists yesterday knocked down the spending ceiling in the Congress of Deputies and left the legislature up in the air, given the uncertain horizon that is already anticipated for the Government to be able to approve the General State Budget for 2025. The parliamentary defeats this Tuesday go beyond losing a vote and having to restart work. In total, yesterday, the Government reaped four parliamentary defeats and raised the balance of setbacks in this legislature to 32. In general, it is a blow to the image of viability that the Government has been striving to build since the mandate began and that it has barely managed to install. Everything is a continuous state of exceptionality.
«In September, there is room to approve a new spending ceiling in the first Council of Ministers after the summer», said socialist sources yesterday. In practice, this shows that Sánchez does not have the majority that allows him to survive in power – the Junts move was unexpected – and, at a time of profound political weakness due to the legal case against his wife, an important front opens up for him in management. The Budgets are the safe-conduct to hold on to La Moncloa and, without them, the panorama becomes extremely complicated. It should be remembered that Sánchez himself promoted the early elections of the 2019 general elections in the face of ERC’s refusal to approve his accounts.
Now, the Treasury has already made it clear that they will not take the Budgets to Congress until they are assured that they will overcome the amendments in their entirety. Yesterday’s was a warning and Junts wanted to stage it that way, making it clear, in addition, that they “are not part of any block”, as the Executive always takes Junts for granted as part of its allies. The Government has already left the public accounts for 2024 in the drawer in view of the repeat elections in Catalonia, aware that some partners – ERC and Junts – in the midst of an electoral struggle for independence hegemony would not agree to make concessions to the State. Now, the resolution of Catalan governability does not seem to provide greater certainties or be a factor of national stability. Yesterday Junts caused the two resounding defeats that the Executive suffered: that of the aforementioned spending ceiling and that of the reform of the Immigration Law.
The Government yesterday sought to downplay the two failures and, above all, avoided any criticism directed at Carles Puigdemont’s party, with the aim of not burning the bridges of the relationship in Madrid – right in the middle of the negotiations between ERC and PSC for the investiture of Illa, where Junts is in the background. The Executive, despite the setback suffered in Congress, has not lost hope of regaining Junts’ seven votes in a new negotiation and warns that they will present the spending ceiling again after returning from vacation. Regarding the warning from the independentists – in view of the future of the legislature – government sources acknowledged their astonishment at their vote against, which, they assure, they did not convey to them in the negotiation. They also link it to the negotiations in Catalonia for the investiture. “They have voted with their guts,” they censure in the Executive, where they are upset with their partners. For her part, the First Vice President of the Government, María Jesús Montero, placed all responsibility for the rejection of the budgetary objectives on the PP. “Those who benefit most are the communities of the PP. It is incomprehensible that the PP harms its governments,” she criticised. “It is simply and plainly a tantrum and a strategy of harassment and demolition, because the aim of the PP is to overthrow Sánchez,” she said. Regarding Junts, she acknowledged her astonishment at its vote against.
Beyond losing the vote on the budget stability objectives, the Government also failed to obtain support for reforming the Immigration Law, as it did not have the support of the PP or Junts. This debate was overshadowed by the severe blow received by Junts on the path to stability, but it was the one that strained the parliamentary session from the beginning. Once again, the Government focused the responsibility on the PP, despite the fact that Puigdemont’s party refused from the beginning to enter into the distribution of migrant minors by communities. Montero accused the PP of being “unsupportive” and of “copying the offensive discourse assimilating immigration with crime.
However, Moncloa tried in extremis to avoid losing the vote on the reform of the Immigration Law and to do so held negotiations with the Government of the Canary Islands, Junts and the PP. The Executive could have ultimately avoided this defeat if it had heeded the request of the PP and the Canary Coalition to withdraw the bill with the aim of negotiating it in the coming weeks, something that the Government refused to do from the beginning with the aim of the Popular Party “being seen” voting against the distribution of migrants. In addition, the Executive assured that this would serve to see the “true rupture” between the PP and Vox.
The PP criticises the fact that the Executive did not meet any of its conditions for giving its “yes” to the Immigration Law. The Popular Party would only give the Government a “yes” if they saw the following proposals included in the reform of the law: the convening of an immediate Conference of Presidents, the declaration of a migration alert throughout the national territory and that the Government would commit to financing the cost of the minors until the age of majority of each of them. The PP criticises that they had only received a few WhatsApp messages from the Government and that the response to their conditions was “insults” from the rostrum. Something that is denied by the Executive, where they assure that they had already committed to holding the Conference of Presidents in September and to improving the parliamentary procedure of the Immigration Law. The PP communities will take their demands to the end and will present a contentious-administrative appeal before the Supreme Court so that Sánchez convenes the Conference of Presidents. The PP also warns that today its president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will announce “measures” in the event that Sánchez “does not take a step forward”