The Board of the Congress of Deputies, controlled by the majority of the investiture, approved yesterday two contracts to provide financial coverage for the use of co-official languages in the activity of Congress, one of the commitments of the agreement between the PSOE and the pro-independence forces for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. The pact entailed the requirement that the implementation in the Lower House also have a run in the EU, taking advantage of the Spanish Presidency of the Union to advance the official status of Catalan in Brussels. This measure was not approved, and Carles Puigdemont swallowed the “deception” of the coalition government because, in reality, he knew from the beginning that it was a demand that was not going to be ratified by the 27. The Swedish Minister of European Affairs appealed precisely to the economic issue. “Its a lot of money”for the 132 million euros that the EU estimated it would cost to launch.
In the Spanish Congress, Puigdemont's demand to force their Honors to reach an agreement with earphones in the Lower House has been covered with minor contracts. Each interpreter has cost 726 euros (VAT included, per session). The PP demanded that this be formalized in legal contracts and the process reached Congress yesterday. The first of the contracts, for the awarding, translation, interpretation and transcription of co-official languages, as well as live subtitling in the Congress of Deputies, is until 2027 for the amount of 15 million euros.
The second, for room equipment, is expected to also be used when foreign visitors come, and is for the amount of 2.551901 million euros. That is, in total more than 17 million euros.
This money, taking as a reference the budget of any autonomous community, would be enough to build a school, an institute and a health center.
The legislative blockade places the budget at the service of more partisan than parliamentary interest
In Congress, the use of 450 earpieces purchased so that deputies understand the interventions in Basque, Catalan and Galician has had limited profitability. In the end, the deputies know that the best way they have to succeed on the news and in the media is to use Spanish, and the most striking exception is the spokesperson for Junts, Míriam Nogueras, who only speaks in Catalan.
In the Plenary Hall, two giant screens also had to be installed on the sides of the chamber through which Their Honors can read the Spanish translation of the speeches delivered in Catalan, Basque or Galician. This expense also occurs in a legislature in which parliamentary activity has been reduced to the use of plenary sessions and practically all of the parliamentary facilities for party action and meetings, in a dialectical escalation in which the insult is part of daily confrontation in which the deputies carry out their work.
The parliamentary agenda is stuck, with initiatives subject to a permanent process of expanding amendments and without agreements within the investiture majority that would allow the measures that come out of the Council of Ministers to be specified in laws. Everything is moving at a very slow pace due to the incompatibility of the partners, and now the electoral process, and the advancement of the Catalan ones, is not a sign that leads one to think that this can change after May 12. This legislative paralysis makes certain budget items that are only put at the service of party interest even more bloody, as will happen with the investigative commissions, both in Congress and in the Senate, on the “Koldo case.”
The deputies and their advisors maintain all their perks without benefiting the national interest
That of the Congress has a less limited purpose than that of the Senate, because it is to investigate the contracting processes for the acquisition of medical supplies during the pandemic by the Public Administrations. The PP plays with an advantage because the UCO investigation is “hot”, a judicialized case, and the news that is expected to continue to emerge from this investigation that continues. Furthermore, Genoa has put all its artillery on the figure of the president's wife, Begoña Gómezfrom the conviction – or information – that data that compromises it will continue to come out.
In short, there is a Congress subjected to the paralysis of the political blockade, but in which the deputies maintain all their perksregardless of their productivity, and surrounded by a court of parliamentary advisors, temporary staff, who on many occasions also do more work for the party than for those they represent at the seat of national sovereignty.