The PSOE has woken up from the fiction of the existence of a progressive majority capable of supporting the policies of the coalition government. It has been proven that Junts is a right-wing party capable of articulating Majorities with PP and Vox in Congress vote against the government.
The socialists saw confirmed what Junts told them before the summer: that he considered that he had broken his commitments with Pedro Sanchez because their pact is a pact of investiture and not of legislature.
The Prime Minister confirmed this personally on Tuesday, when the Junts deputies rejected an initiative by Sumar on housing to punish the PSOE. And this Thursday, when Carles Puigdemont made it known via the X network that he continues to maintain his rejection of the spending ceiling that will be voted on Thursday and that it constitutes the first step for the 2025 budgets.
In fact, Junts began to say it loud and clear in July, when he lowered the deficit trajectory or the spending ceiling, the first step of the budget, and also admitted the treatment of the reform of the immigration law. The Progressive Majority Was a Fiction.
The next stage of the government’s parliamentary ordeal will take place next Thursday, when the spending cap will be voted on for the second time. Executive sources see the vote as vital to gauge the party’s intentions. Carles Puigdemont and we begin to see how difficult it can be to keep the legislature afloat.
In principle, the government has already received the message that the vote of the seven Junts deputies will repeat the rejection, but Moncloa does not give up its efforts. Or at least, that is what it conveys.
This Thursday, his Carles Puigdemont announced that his group in Congress would vote again against the path to stability: “For the same thing we voted for Nowe will vote again so that No. If they change it, we’ll talk about it.”
On social media, Puigdemont ridiculed the socialists’ criticism of Junts’ decision to overturn the temporary rental law presented by Sumar on Tuesday, after announcing that they would abstain: “As I see that they consider it a crime to change our vote,” the answer to what they are asking us now will be the same as we have always given, there will be no surprises.
Despite this slowdown, Moncloa has not yet thrown in the towel. They believe that if Junts changed and allowed the approval of the spending ceiling, it would still be possible that the budgets for 2025 would be approved later.
On the other hand, if the independentists maintained their rejection and the rule presented by the Government fell, only a miracle would save the accounts and they would have to be extended.
The October Congress
Sánchez and his entire team are insisting these days on his intention to exhaust the three-year termeven if they have to extend the accounts. In reality, it would be unthinkable for an executive to send a different message and publicly admit, for example, that in these circumstances it would be impossible to continue governing.
This vote is so important that Sánchez has given the order to activate all open contact bridges with Junts to try. to the extremewith the message that if they accept the approval of the spending ceiling, it will be possible to delay the presentation of the budgets until November, while they wait to celebrate their congress, scheduled for October 25, 26 and 27.
This would involve waiting for Junts to complete its internal process and then being able to freely decide whether or not to support the budgets.
The Constitution stipulates that the government must present the budgets before the end of September, but sometimes this is not respected and this time the executive has the alibi of rejecting the spending ceiling in July. The project will be presented later to the Cortes with the spending ceiling for 2022 if it loses Thursday’s vote and assuming a rejection in Congress with the votes of the PP, Vox and Junts and the subsequent extension.
In the negotiation to the extreme There are contacts with the Junts parliamentary group in Congress; with the Secretary General of Junts, Jordi Turull and by other possible means.
Socialist sources assure that Santos Cerdán, head of the PSOE Organization, and Puigdemont were to meet again outside Spain before Thursday. These sources do not confirm that the meeting has been closed or that it will finally take place. Even more so after Puigdemont’s message this Thursday.
These meetings, which were almost always held in France, were interrupted in June, before the agreement between the PSC and the ERC, the investiture of Salvador Illa and the new escape of Puigdemont, as reported by EL ESPAÑOL.
In addition, government sources explain that they have also activated the pressure of Catalan businessmen close to Junts and the Catalan town halls where the independentists govern. The message is that if a new spending ceiling is not approved, there will be five billion euros less for autonomous communities and town halls.
For now, the response from Junts is firm in the negative, but Moncloa and the PSOE remain silent so as not to burn bridges and keep hope alive. The legislature is back in play.
And the unease with Junts within the government is growing. For example, in Moncloa, there is regret that Junts corrected his vote on Tuesday at the last minute, which forced Sánchez to mobilize for a vote that was to end in defeat. There were doubts in the presidential team about the advisability of bringing him into Congress, they suspected that Junts had changed when he learned that the government could lose and they wanted to avoid the defeat being attributed to Sánchez’s absence.
The ERC will also hold its congress, but in its case it will be on November 10 and it will be more difficult to wait to deal with the Budgets. In the Government, they maintain contacts with the two ERC sectors that have the best chances of winning and explain that with the Oriol Junqueras have been in agreement since 2018 without any problem and this with the Marta Rovira the investiture of Salvador Illa. That is to say, there is a certain tranquility, as with the PNV and Bildu.
