Such socialist optimism could not last long if it depended on the affirmative vote of Junts. Goodbye, deficit path. Goodbye, spending ceiling. Budgets? Well, we will see, but for now they are far away. They can only be perceived on the horizon. The sailboat has not sunk, but it has reached an area where there is almost no wind. The absolute calm makes it hardly move. The crew will soon start to get thirsty, a thirst that drives one mad. At some point, someone will have to make a decision, perhaps return to port and be content with the previous extended budgets. The only thing that is achieved by prolonging the suspense is to undermine the credibility of the government.
Not long ago, Pedro Sánchez began to improvise in a speech before the PSOE Federal Committee and it didn’t go very well. “We are going to move forward with determination on this agenda, with or without the support of the opposition, with or without the help of a legislative power that must necessarily be more constructive and less restrictive.” Just before the words “the support of a legislative power”, there was a very short pause, as if in doubt about how to continue the rest of the sentence.
The right made a big scandal. To a certain extent, logical. It was not going to let the opportunity that Sánchez himself had given it pass. It was all part of the political theater, because of course a government needs Parliament to approve bills or ratify decree laws. If Parliament closes in on itself, the possibility of taking measures that could transform society is blocked.
This is largely what happened to Mariano Rajoy’s government after losing the absolute majority in December 2015. But the change of society has never interested the civil registrar of Pontevedra. On the contrary, it is part of the usual discourse of the left. Governing with the sole aim of preventing the right from accessing power is useless for many left-wing voters. Not everything, but enough for you to lose the next elections. Certainly, he is a very exquisite voter with the menu.
At this point, it doesn’t matter whether the Council of Ministers’ decision two weeks ago to send the two measures back to Congress – they had already been rejected in July – was a tactical error or a symptom of something worse. Junts had voted against them before. What made you think that this time would be different? In this, the nationalists had no ambiguity.
It was not until Santos Cerdán went to Switzerland to meet with Carles Puigdemont that the former president put his “no” on his face. That is already a desire to suffer. The government had no choice but to renounce the vote of Congress when it knew it had lost it. This has a certain symbolic value. Losing a vote, because it is something that will happen more than once if you do not have an absolute majority, is not the same as openly acknowledging it by removing a key issue from the agenda of Congress.
The only possible explanation for the lack of new offers to the Junts and other parliamentary groups is that the PSOE knows that it would be useless for the moment, that it will have to endure a few months of parliamentary withdrawal until the nationalists change their position. This would force the extension of the previous budgets and would end the dilemma.
Junts justified their rejection by arguing that they would give nothing in exchange for nothing. It would be ugly to admit that they are furious that Puigdemont’s amnesty has been blocked pending a decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Meanwhile, the former president continues to risk arrest if he enters Spain. Or because the fantasy that Puigdemont could be sworn in to Parliament after obtaining only 21% of the vote has come to nothing.
But these seven seats are not free. Those of any parliamentary group are not, unless they belong to a party that is part of the government. “If Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE wants different things to happen, it must do different things,” warned Míriam Nogueras, spokesperson for the Junts group. She referred to a proposal approved in Parliament in 2014, with the votes of the COPS, which intended to grant the autonomous communities “at least a third” of the total deficit target of the entire state.
María Jesús Montero, Minister of Finance, considered that she had an interesting proposal for the LACC because of the money that it would release in their favor. Regarding the target of 2.5% deficit for all public administrations in 2025, a gap of 2.4% corresponded to the Central Administration, 0.1% to the Autonomous Communities and zero, that is, the budget balance, in the case of municipalities.
Despite these percentages, the new figures offer considerable financial relief to autonomous communities and municipalities: 12 billion euros of additional spending.
In theory, this would have encouraged the PP to abstain from voting even though it was not even considering approving new budgets. It is impossible. The party does not consider any other option than the maxim “the enemy, no water”, even if it costs us money. Núñez Feijóo’s premise is that Parliament is dead and must be finished off in one fell swoop so that there is no choice but to call elections. Today, it is another fantasy, but it allows Genoa and the regional barons to be kept on the same wavelength. Feijóo has always left his regional presidents a lot of room for action, but at this point, the economic interests of his regions are secondary.
So ultimately it comes down to money. That is what we always come back to when we discuss budgets and related issues. So we have to ask ourselves why the government presented the same figures on September 10 that were rejected in July. It is one thing to be optimistic and another to be out of touch with reality.
The conflict is not unexpected. It should be remembered that, shortly after coming to power and in a worse economic situation, the Rajoy government imposed conditions on the LACC that were almost as harsh as they are today. The difference is obvious. The PP had an absolute majority in Parliament and all the other administrations had to overcome obstacles. In 2013, Spain had to reduce its budget deficit to 4.5%. The State granted itself 3.8% and left the LACC 0.7%. The following year, the national deficit was expected to be 2.8%, and the LACC was to remain at only 0.1%.
Can the paradox be any funnier? Of course. The PSOE, through the current minister Óscar López, has defended that the new distribution of the deficit target be made at 50%, half for the Government and the other half for the autonomous communities. Let’s see how Junts discovers it.
It’s always the same on this subject. The position of the PSOE or the PP varies completely depending on whether they are in government or in opposition. The fact is that without an absolute majority, you can’t expect the others to be delighted to receive your first offer.
