“He protected Pedro Sánchez from a new parliamentary defeat so as not to facilitate the PP’s victory.” This is how the PP summed up its anger at Vox after Santiago Abascal’s supporters abstained this Wednesday in a parliamentary motion against the bilateral negotiation between the government and Catalonia. The initiative, which is nothing more than a request from Congress to the government, failed with 139 votes in favor and 171 against. The 33 abstentions from the extreme right tipped the balance in favor of the socialists.
The motion defended by the PP rejected the cancellation of the debt that the Generalitat has with the central government and assured that “the problem of Catalonia is not that it is poorly financed, but that it is poorly managed”. “A socialist government has already made the mistake of negotiating bilaterally the current financing system.” Among other issues, the text asks in its operative part to “guarantee that multilateralism and transparency will be the principles” of the new financing system. “Bilateralism must be abandoned,” concludes the initiative.
The PP voted in favour of the motion, as did the deputies of the UPN and the Canarian Coalition. 139 votes in total. Against, the PSOE, Sumar and the partners of the investiture. But the seven Junts deputies were absent from the session this Wednesday under the pretext of the celebration of the Diada, the Catalan national holiday.
Another unexpected abstention was that of José Luis Ábalos. The former PSOE minister joined the Mixed Group after being accused of his possible responsibility in the so-called “Koldo case”, but until now he had maintained unity of action with his former colleagues in the Socialist Group. Until today. The notice of abstention to those in the PSOE who are trying to blame him for the alleged corruption in the purchase of masks during the pandemic took place in two non-legislative but relevant votes: Venezuela and financing.
Thus, the government added 171 votes, so Vox’s 33 were essential. If Vox had voted in favor of the motion, Congress would have positioned itself against bilateralism, as it did a few minutes before by recognizing Edmundo González as president-elect of Venezuela.
But Abascal gave the order not to support the PP motion and Vox abstained. In a message on its social networks, the far-right party assures that Feijóo’s party refused to accept its amendments to the motion in which, in essence, it demanded the end of the Basque quota and the improvement of Navarre.
“The PP refuses to eliminate the Basque quota and the Navarrese improvement, which represent an inequality between Spaniards,” Vox published on Twitter.
But in the PP, they do not want to put the hypothetical future Catalan concert in the same bag as the current particular financing systems of the Basque Country and Navarre, because, they say, these two systems are recognized in the Constitution.
Feijóo’s side goes even further and assures that initially Vox was supposed to vote “no”. The proof, they say, is that one of the far-right MPs, José María Sánchez García, voted electronically and, instead of abstaining, rejected the motion. “Ábalos votes with Feijóo and a Vox MP votes with Sánchez”, they say ironically. And they explain: “When we warned them that if they voted with us, the PSOE would lose, they decided to abstain”.
