There are just two days left for Congress to vote on the path to stability and Pedro Sanchez He already expects to accumulate a new parliamentary defeat. The latest indicator are the statements of the Secretary General of Junts, Jordi Turullin which he asks to raise the spending ceiling and allocate more money to Catalonia. If this does not happen, his party will vote against it again on Thursday.
“This will not surprise anyone. Anything to consolidate coffee for everyone or worsen the deficit of Catalonia “He will never have our vote,” he assured. The independentists want the Government to present a new path in which their demands are collected, while the Executive has presented practically the same one that has already been declined.
Turull spoke on Monday in a tone very similar to the one he has used before Carles Puigdemont last week. The former president said that “the answer will be the same as we have always given.” “Just like we voted no, we will vote no again. If they change, we will talk about it,” he said on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
The only nuance that exists between the statements of Puigdemont and Turull is that in the meantime, senior officials of the PSOE and Junts met this weekend in Switzerland. Although neither party wants to reveal the details of the meeting, it is clear that no agreement has been reached that would facilitate a yes vote on Thursday.
According to PSOE sources, there are no longer specific negotiations underway to obtain the yes of Junts. The sources indicate that there are conversations, as with the rest of the parliamentary groups, but that there is no negotiation in which they must propose something concrete to obtain their support.
“If there is no negotiation, there is no voting”Junts sources respond. The government, for its part, is willing to discuss the content of the general state budgets, but does not want to negotiate in exchange for other things. “That’s enough. What is at stake here is the continuity of the policies that we have approved with these parliamentary groups,” a socialist source commented last week.
Territorial pressure
From Moncloa, they hope, although with more optimism than conviction, that the pressure of the local administrations will serve to condition the vote of the Juntas and the PP. The position that the members of the government continually defend is that the objectives of stability imply a margin of expenditure of approximately 11.5 billion euros for the autonomous communities and municipal councils.
If the deficit trajectory is not approved on Thursday, the administrations will have less room for maneuver, according to the government. In fact, from Moncloa they defend that if the new path is not approved, they will have to continue with the previous one and that it benefits the central government and harms the territories.
They believe that what the opposition calls blackmail can serve to increase pressure on the PP, since it controls the majority of autonomous communities and municipal councils, and above all Junts, which govern more than 300 municipal councils.
The PSOE spokesman, Esther Penatried to explore this idea further on Monday. “There are 11.5 billion euros that could be lost, but those who vote against it will have to explain themselves,” he said from the Ferraz headquarters. “Each MP will have to explain themselves in their territory when they return. Each MP will have to go home, look their neighbours in the face and say what they voted for,” he added.
However, the PSOE recognizes that Carles Puigdemont “is doing his thing, while we are doing what everyone else is doing.” That is, the former president is unhappy with the application of the amnesty law, especially in his case, and that this complicates the relationship between the investiture partner and the central government.
Despite this situation, the government It doesn’t look like he’s going to refuse to present the budgets. by 2025. Even within the PSOE, they consider that even if on Thursday they reversed the deficit trajectory, this does not imply that in the future they will demolish the general accounts.
What is possible is that they will have to present them a little later than expected since the initial idea of presenting them at the end of September, as indicated in the Constitution, is no longer as viable. Junts will hold a congress in the second half of October, so the government could delay the processing until November and thus facilitate possible support, without internal debates.
