The legislature is on the brink of an existential imbroglio. The hangover from the Catalan elections and the agreement between the ERC and the PSC to invest Salvador Illa as president have further complicated the already complex parliamentary majority that invested Pedro Sánchez as president less than a year ago. With Carles Puigdemont excluded from the governability of the Generalitat, Junts begins to join forces with the PP and Vox to put obstacles in the way of the government in Congress. A scenario that blocks the path traced by Moncloa to approve the general budgets of the State “on time”.
In fact, the Executive itself recognizes that “Plan A”, that of negotiating, processing and approving the new accounts in the autumn so that they come into force on 1 January, is already, today, a chimera. But that does not mean, they specify, that they have thrown in the towel. “There are a thousand examples of budgets that are approved this year, that would not be a problem”, they explain to the Government, where they assume that the conclaves that the Catalan independence parties are waiting for to define the orientation and direction will invalidate, in practice, any margin for negotiation during the months of September and October.
The most optimistic roadmap currently in the socialist ranks is that the passage of the weeks and the resolution of the internal processes of the Junts and the ERC will contribute to “reducing the inflammation” and that this will allow to rebuild the majority in Congress that invested Sánchez. In this case, they maintain within the Government that they have “everything prepared” to face a political negotiation and an express parliamentary procedure to promote the approval and entry into force of the new accounts.
“We are already working internally and there is a lot of progress compared to last year’s negotiations, in which we left the work done with the PNV, with Bildu, with Sumar and also with ERC and with Junts. So we are not going to start from scratch because we already have things agreed and we have this basis,” they explain from the Ministry of Finance.
However, after the latest moves by Puigdemont’s party and faced with the question of how its seven deputies will behave in Congress from now on, Moncloa is already also working on the hypothesis of a second budget extension. “We are not there yet, far from it. We will try, although in the event that the budgets have to be extended, we have the peace of mind that they are expansive and progressive accounts,” explains the presidential team.
In any case, what the Executive has already committed to is to prepare and present a budget project even if it does not manage to obtain the necessary support. “We will work to present accounts, new budgets in line with the economic situation. We are aware of our responsibility and we will respect it,” announced the minister’s spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, on Tuesday.
Alegría also made an appeal to the partners of Congress in the government. “When this government fulfills its task, the responsibility of the rest of the political groups will also come into play. It will be time to listen to your opinion,” he warned.
For the moment, the first mission of Pedro Sánchez’s political career will be to carry out the pre-accounts stage, the path to stability, which the right-wing majority of the PP, Vox and Junts reversed just before the summer holidays. The intention of the Executive is to present the path again during the month of September. And they call on the PP and the Junts not to contribute to reducing the economic capacity of the municipalities and autonomous communities that they themselves govern. According to the accounts of the Treasury Department, if this year’s path to stability does not continue, it would have a negative impact of 4.5 billion euros for the municipalities and 6.0 billion for the regional governments.
Junts plays the opposition
Back to activity this Tuesday in Congress with the celebration of the Permanent Deputation, Junts began the day with an illustrative phrase: “The first thing we want to clarify is that we are not part of any Spanish bloc. Our bloc has always been Catalonia. The phrase of the spokesperson Míriam Nogueras, from Barcelona, before the start of the vote on the PP’s proposals in Congress, is not new. But it sums up the movement that their formation has made from a year until today.
In August 2023, Carles Puigdemont’s team reached an agreement with the PSOE to appoint Francina Armengol as president, a preliminary step to its vote in favor of the investiture of Pedro Sánchez a few months later. But once the amnesty law was approved at the beginning of the summer and the formation of influence on the governability of Catalonia was removed, with Salvador Illa in the Generalitat, the scenario is very different.
The last plenary session of the course, at the end of July, already followed the philosophy summarized in this sentence by Nogueras. The Juntas reversed two important initiatives of the government: the reform of the immigration law and the path to stability before the approval of the budgets. And this Tuesday, in the first debate after the summer holidays, he deepened this distance with the Government.
The PP presented to the Permanent Deputation a battery of requests for the appearance of Pedro Sánchez and several of his ministers. The migration crisis, Venezuela, regional financing or the flight of Carles Puigdemont were among the varied list of topics. The post-convergents supported four of these requests – including one that asked to clarify the reasons for the former president’s second flight to Waterloo – although their vote did not manage to influence the majorities and they all ended up failing.
But the move, which represents both an exit from the investiture bloc and a rapprochement with the PP, is symbolic at the beginning of this year when the government has an important parliamentary agenda ahead of it that will begin with the negotiation of next year’s budgets.
Just hours after Illa’s inauguration, on 9 August, Junts Secretary General Jordi Turull, in an interview on Rac1, warned that it could not be “excluded” that his party would withdraw its support for the PSOE in Congress and break off relations with the Government. The reasoning given by the leader at the time was that the agreement reached between the PSC and the ERC for a concert in Catalonia had changed the framework of what the PSOE had signed with Junts in Brussels in view of Sánchez’s inauguration.
This Tuesday, Puigdemont’s party failed to condition the votes, because the Government’s majority in the Permanent Deputation is somewhat looser, unlike what happens in the plenary session of Congress. But from now on, Sánchez needs your support to pass any initiative in the Lower House. And a “no” from Junts leaves only two possibilities: the chimera of knocking on the PP’s door or being forced to lose votes in Congress.
