And suddenly, the economy. Because the INE adds an additional 36.4 billion to economic growth, which allows the GDP growth forecast to be revised upwards to 2.7% in 2024. The OECD describes Spain as the engine of a euro zone weighed down by weak growth and our country is leaving inflation behind. crisis with a CPI falling to 1.5%.
And suddenly, the international scene. Because, with good macroeconomic data, Pedro Sánchez is positioning himself at the United Nations General Assembly as one of the main global players in the battle for the survival of democracies and against the death spiral in Gaza and Lebanon.
And, therefore, the world of Culture. Because Sánchez arrives in Madrid from New York and arrives, accompanied by his wife Begoña Gómez, at the San Sebastián Film Festival to accompany Pedro Almodovar, winner of the 2024 Donostia Prize, and become the first president of the government to attend the exhibition.
And, therefore, the resistance manual. Because if there is anyone who can be named champion of the impossible, it is the president of the government. Always on the edge of the abyss and always with one last movement that saves him from the precipice.
He starts again. When everyone took the blockade for granted and the news week would revolve around a new parliamentary scramble for the government after the path to fiscal stability was reversed for the second time by Congress, another twist of the scenario has arisen. The Council of Ministers withdrew the bill, not only to avoid another defeat, but also to provide a new opportunity for negotiation and dialogue with Junts.
A decision that would not have been made without first testing the water flow of the pool in which Puigdemont swims, some days butterflies and other days crawling. There was water and the neoconvergents are ready to sit down to reach an agreement that will allow the legislative body to be released from the blockade, as suggested by both parties.
Since then, everything is a sign that invites, if not agreement, at least to think that nothing is broken. The separatists are asking, of course, something more than gestures and also that of the 2.5% of the deficit taken from Brussels, the Communities have a third, or 0.8% and Sánchez sent the first vice-president and Minister of the Treasury to balance the numbers once again. And while María Jesús Montero was making numbers, other winks from the government appeared to win Junts back.
On the one hand, the Minister of Foreign Affairs again demanded from Brussels that the co-official languages can be used in the European Parliament while requesting a meeting with Roberta Metsola to accelerate the implementation of what was one of the commitments acquired by the PSOE. with Junts for the inauguration of Sánchez. On the other hand, in Congress, the commissions of inquiry into the Barcelona attacks and Operation Catalunya have been reactivated.
At La Moncloa, we admit that it will be difficult to regain lost trust, but we also read with pleasure Puigdemont’s gesture when he responded with “I will say it without funnel: it’s a lie” to a cover from ABC in which he included a quote from the former president who said: “If Sánchez wants my votes, let him come to Waterloo.” If everything was broken, they say, “he would not have bothered to deny such a sentence which has never been transmitted neither in these nor in similar terms to the PSOE.”
So nothing is broken. Neither because of the non-application of the amnesty – which was already something which, during the negotiation of the law, had been noted which depended on the criteria of the judges and not the government – nor because the Treasury did not didn’t bother to change the spending limit. which was canceled for the first time before the summer and present it to Congress under the same conditions. From now on it will be Montero, if there are changes as Junts demands, who will once again have to explain why he made possible what was untouchable two months ago.
Two Pyrrhic victories, but much celebrated
In any case, the PSOE believes that there will be no progress before the congress of Juntas to be held at the end of October, a conclave in which the organic future of Puigdemont within his party will also have to be ruler. But for now, the socialists have managed to avoid another defeat in Congress this week and hit back against a PP that amended the entire law on sustainable mobility and presented a motion to force the government to develop a structural budget plan. Two Pyrrhic victories, but much celebrated in the socialist ranks, which saw the popular balloon burst in the face of a cabinet that lacked support to approve initiatives in Congress. All this during a week in which Feijóo once again found himself entangled in his own contradictions and saw how his barons maintain their own strategies, regardless of what Genoa dictates.
Partly, in his sudden effort to direct social policies and take a new path of opposition, he emerged this week as a defender of conciliatory policies and announced a plan that will provide social workers with free education of the early childhood and the defense of motherhood as the protagonist. You only need to take a look at the newspaper library to remember the systematic blocking of this type of initiative by the PP. In 2019, for example, it was the only group that voted against birth and care leave that introduced the new 16-week equal leave system for fathers and mothers. The same year, she took the extension of paternity and maternity leave to the Constitutional Court and opposed the enjoyment of 28-day breastfeeding leave for workers not covered by collective agreements.
In 2021, he voted against the new supplement intended to reduce the gender gap, which increases the pensions of members of the couple who have seen their career damaged by the birth of a child and which 820,000 already receive today retirees, 90% of whom are women.
In the autonomous communities where it governs, the policy of the PP does not seem very consistent with this plan that Feijóo now wants to promote in favor of conciliation: during his first five years at the head of the Xunta, Feijóo reduced the amount help with dependency; Andalusia returned 112 million euros from the Recovery Plan to the government after refusing to create more than 12,000 public places for early childhood education from 0 to 3 years old; Castilla y León is the community that has most reduced its contribution to Dependency and Ayuso presides over the Spanish region with the least economic investment in social policies per capita while reducing taxes for the richest in the Community.
This in terms of conciliation and social policy, but the same challenge occurred between his announced vote against the trajectory of the deficit, finally withdrawn, and his abstention in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council. Or before the land law which was approved, with the PP voting against before the summer, and the FEMP supported – with a majority of the popular. Or before the recently approved Sustainable Mobility Law, whose treatment declined in the previous legislature due to the call for elections but to which those of Feijóo only presented amendments to the articles while this week they defended one in its entirety which was not approved. Or before the immigration law, for which in the Canary Islands an agreement was obtained thanks to their vote and, however, they managed to block in Congress.
The disorder and contradiction in their opposition strategy also clashes with that which each of the barons deploys on their territory. The most resounding example this week was that of Ayuso’s no to the reduction of working hours while Feijóo opened himself to the study of a revision, but also that of the president of La Rioja, Gonzalo Capellán , who, at the end of his meeting in La Moncloa with Sánchez admitted last Friday to having only spoken about the problems of his region and not having asked Sánchez to include the question of regional financing in the next Conference of Presidents, which is the slogan given by Génova. And this, just a day after the presidents of Valencia and Andalusia, Carlos Mazón and Juan Manuel Moreno, met, outside the national leadership, to unite on a common position on financing. This is normal when national leadership falters.
