The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez will receive this Friday at La Moncloa his most capricious baron, the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page.and he will do it in a crecord of rupture and notable distancing between the two due to the internal fissure that the PSOE has opened Catalan quotaagainst which the Castilian baron-La Mancha has harshly criticized in recent months.
The meeting, scheduled for 4 p.m., will take place six years after the last bilateral face to face that Sánchez and Page held in Moncloa on October 15, 2018. The meeting is part of the series of meetings that the President of the Government maintains with the regional presidents after the strong controversy that the single Catalan financing caused in Spanish politics.
This Friday, in addition to Page, the regional presidents of Murcia and the Valencian Community will be received by Sánchez at La Moncloa. the popular Fernando López Miras and Carlos Mazónalso very critical of the economic concert of Catalonia, even if the meeting of the president of Castilla-La Mancha is the one which aroused the most expectations.
Emiliano García-Page and Pedro Sánchez during their official meeting on October 15, 2018 in Moncloa.
Embarrassment and “so far”
Page’s rejection of the Catalan quota also includes the demand for a new “fairer and more united” regional financing model“, in which Castilla-La Mancha can leave its current status of under-resourced communitya situation in which Andalusia, Murcia and the Valencian Community also find themselves.
Page’s strong criticism of Sánchez’s transfer to the separatists with the Catalan quota strained political relations between the two and the official meeting this Friday will take place in this environment of lack of political and personal chemistry.
The president of Castile-La Mancha even described the economic agreement for Catalonia as “obscene, crude and embarrassing” in an energetic manner institutional declaration made on July 31 at the Fuensalida Palace, where he established his critical position towards the now famous “so far” it resonated in the rooms of Ferrar and Moncloa.
Tension in the Federal Committee
Page, since then, has left a long series of criticisms against concessions made to the independence movement, including the amnesty lawagainst which he filed an appeal on September 9 before the Constitutional Court, considering that it “violates the principle of equality” enshrined in article 14 of the Spanish Constitution.
The Catalan quota has in any case been the main battle horse of the Castilian-La Mancha leader in recent weeks and, in fact, Page announced that during Friday’s meeting he would try to convince Sánchez of the need to reverse course for the reason, according to him, that it breaks equality between Spaniards and territorial solidarity. The Government of Castile-La Mancha estimates that this unique financing for Catalonia will result in a notable economic hole in community coffersand for this same reason the PP pressure page “order” the eight socialist deputies in the region to vote against the quota and “bring down” Sánchez.
This climate of political tension was perceptible in Federal Committee of the PSOE on September 7where Page and other barons, such as Javier Lambándenounced the PSC agreement with ERC and the lack of explanations from the government, which has not yet officially made public the exact content of the agreement. In this commission, Sánchez did not even discuss the Catalan quota with his regional barons.
Transfer and other requests
It is therefore clear that regional financing will be the central axis of the issues that Page will raise with Sánchez, even if the president of Castilla-La Mancha has already publicly declared other “big topics” you want to discuss at the meetingincluding a fundamental one in regional policy: water supply and closure of the Tajo-Segura transfera file in which the position of Castile-La Mancha collides head-on with that of the Levant regions.
Page, in this sense, will ask Sánchez to urgently launch the new rules for operating transferswith which the Ministry of Ecological Transition is clearly behind, and the minimum ecological flow rates, always with the final aim of gradually closing the transfer and replacing it with a supply with desalination plants. This issue has been at the heart of Page’s policies in Castile-La Mancha during his nine years in office.
The Castilian-La Mancha leader also wants to speak with Sánchez about infrastructure, employment, energy development and business investmentwith the completion of AVE Madrid-Toledo-Talavera-Extremadura as one of the main axesin addition to the construction of new highways. Page will ask Sánchez to resolve the “neck” what is happening in Castile-La Mancha with the electricity supply, and this threatens the viability of certain commercial investments in the region, despite the fact that the community of Castile-La Mancha is a national leader in energy production renewable.
rarefied context
The Page-Sánchez meeting will therefore have a busy agenda. And it also takes place in a political context full of interest, with the open possibility, although at the moment improbable, that the President of the Government and Secretary General of the PSOE wants “move Page’s chair” as leader of the Socialists of Castile-La Mancha at the regional party congress scheduled for January 18 and 19.
Before this appointment, the PSOE must celebrate, at the end of November in Seville, the Federal Congress which will re-elect Sánchez as secretary general and consolidate its political power. The most striking thing this week in this area was Page’s refusal, like Lambán, to support Sánchez for this re-election.
It is expected that Page, in any case, will be re-elected in January by his regional congress, but the hypothesis of a primary with an alternative candidate remains open and pending, with the name of the Minister of Housing, Isabelle Rodriguezringing in swimming pools. All sources consulted by EL ESPAÑOL EL DIGITAL CLM in recent days consider it “unlikely” that Sánchez will expel Page to Castile-La Mancha.
