Vice President María Jesús Montero is surprised. This does not give credit. It is not explained that they are asking her for explanations about the tax agreement with Esquerra that allowed the investiture of Salvador Illa in Catalonia. The text of the pact has been made public and for now it seems that there is nothing more to say. Pedro Sánchez also did not specify more than what is known in his speech on Saturday to the Federal Committee. Page and Lambán were very angry. Well, okay, well, I am happy. Do not ask for more, because the day will come when it will have to be discussed in detail in the form of a bill in Congress.
Until that day, the Popular Party has carte blanche to say whatever it wants and describe the agreement in the most hurtful terms. The Government has adopted the path of unilateral disarmament while waiting to know what the compensation that will be offered to the other autonomous communities will consist of so that it does not appear that this is a tailor-made trial for the Generalitat. There will be money for everyone, Pedro Sánchez announced. But the communities governed by the PP do not want money, but something else. Well, they want more money, but above all they want the Government to bleed from its wound.
The most worrying thing for the government is that today it must know that the agreement that would grant the Generalitat the capacity to collect all taxes will not be approved in Congress. In case of doubt, but there was none, Míriam Nogueras made it clear that the great concession obtained by Esquerra is worthless.
Calling it an “economic concert” is a joke for Junts. “The real debate is power. Either Madrid has it or Catalonia has it. Collecting and sending money to the Spanish treasury is not a concert and it is not having the key to the treasury either,” Nogueras said in plenary session.
This is why he had already said: “After so many weeks, no one still understands what has been agreed.” He understands something, because he has already expressed his most explicit rejection. In any case, the Minister of Finance does not understand why she is being asked for more information: “It is curious that a political agreement requires so many explanations.” As if that were new in politics.
Until things are clearer, the PP can continue with its favourite way of life: hyperbole dramatised by heart-rending cries. This is what Cuca Gamarra did, who drew up the list of victims of the budgetary earthquake. “This coupon is financed by the teachers of the Andalusians, the doctors of Extremadura, the transport of the inhabitants of La Mancha and Rioja, the dependence of the Asturians. This is how they are going to finance the process,” he said.
It looked like a list of corpses of honest workers, squeezed so hard that the money of the perfidious Catalans was coming out of their ears and they no longer knew how to spend it.
Montero’s response was to target those who benefited from the tax cuts implemented by the PP’s regional governments. “You forgive an average of 6,000 euros to the richest people in this country, in Madrid, in Andalusia and in the communities where you govern.” In the meantime, what we must do is for each one to publicly show the shame of the other so that the Greek choir is scandalized and raises its hands to its head.
Félix Bolaños opted for the joke. PP spokesman Miguel Tellado asked him if he considered Maduro a dictator and if he would recognize Edmundo González as the elected president of Venezuela. The minister then responded directly, specifying that “Spain’s position is that of the European Union, the United Nations and the observers.” Previously, he had talked about going to the hairdresser with Tellado, who was already quite bald before meeting Feijóo.
Tellado responded with a smear in the form of a question, a trick that is very common in Congress and generally not recommended in the workplace: “Are there leaders of socialism corrupted by the dictator Maduro?” In the next sentence, he mentioned Zapatero so that someone would not understand his intention. And whoever wants proof should look for it in the yellow press, that’s what it’s for.
The Minister of the Presidency came prepared with the Catalan PP gag from 2012, which even the robots already know on Twitter, but it seems that it is not so much the PP parliamentary group. He read a sentence asking for a “unique” financing proposal for Catalonia. He asked if something like that had broken “the unity of the country”. A few PP deputies could not resist it and said in unison in a beautiful homage to Pavlov’s dog: “Yess …
The popular candidate of this campaign was Alicia Sánchez Camacho, welcomed today by Díaz Ayuso and taken refuge in a seat in the Madrid Assembly. So that no one doubts the party’s ability to forgive heretics, witches and sorcerers.
The day ended with the government’s defeat in the vote demanding the recognition of Edmundo González as president of Venezuela, something that had been taken for granted since the day before the PNV announced its favorable vote. The same could happen when the spending ceiling is voted on for the second time, rejected in July because of Junts, which has shown no sign of changing its mind. Not to mention the budgets. The agreement with ERC to reform the Catalan tax system could suffer the same fate, from what can be deduced from Junts’ speech.
If it is true that they say that the worst thing about a defeat is to look stupid, the government has decided that the best thing to do is not to grimace at all. As if it had bought a bonus for fifty parliamentary defeats and had plenty of time before spending them all. With that, it will be able to reach the end of the year. Beyond those dates, anyone can bet. We will have to hope that they do not spend half the mandate talking about Tellado’s hair.
