The revolt reaches the heart of Sanchism with Barbón’s criticisms

If there is a autonomous baron with proven loyalty To the President of the Government that Barbón is, and if there is a PSOE federation of which the same can be said, it is that of Asturias. There, where we find the brand new delegate of the Government of Asturias, Adriana Lastra, former number two of Sánchez and probably the leader who has believed the most in the Secretary General, despite the difficult moments she has experienced in power, especially with her defenestration in 2016. Barbón has not said a word louder than the other, but he has made it clear that removing Catalonia from the common regime of the autonomous communities is a qualitative leap that even he cannot ignore.

I can’t do it “as an Asturian, as a socialist and as president” because he, he said, does not defend the interests of the Asturians “with words, but with actions” such as raising his voice against the pact between Catalan socialists and republicans to invest his colleague Salvador Illa. The presidential candidate called him by phone, he admitted it, but “logically, [él] “He has his position and I have mine,” he lamented.

“All communities are underfunded,” denounced Barbón, who focuses on weighing factors such as aging, orography or dispersion when distributing resources instead of applying the principle of ordinalityincluded in the document that reflects the pre-agreement between PSC and Esquerra as a “limit” of the solidarity of Catalonia with the rest of the State, and which means that each region receives the same resources that it contributes to the State. A condition to which Asturias once again strongly opposes.

Rigor and debate

The regional president, in office since 2019, showed this Friday his “surprise” that his position of rejecting his government’s agreement is now “surprising”, since this is what they have “historically” defended tooth and nail: the rreform of an “obsolete” system that, although “more difficult than a sudoku”, it must be confronted “with a vision of a federal state” and that it is based on “inalienable” principles such as “equality”, interterritorial “solidarity” and “multilaterality”.

And as proof of the Principality’s strong commitment to the common financing regime, Barbón mentioned four chords -“I owe them,” he confessed- in which his Executive participates with the approval of the national leadership of the PSOE: the pact signed by all the groups of the Asturian Parliament except Vox in 2020, the Declaration of Santiago of 2021, the document born of the XXXIII Congress of the Asturian Socialist Federation in March 2022 and the pact with the Convocatoria por Asturias-IU, with those who have been governing in coalition since the regional elections of May last year. Asturias and Castilla-La Mancha are the only two socialist strongholds that are part of the common model, given that Navarre is subject to the regional regime.

Although he does not rule out taking the transfer of the key to the safe to Catalonia to court if it goes against the interests of the Principality, Barbón calls for “rigor” and, above all, debate. The leader of the Asturian socialists demands that the President of the Government call a meeting of the territories to debate the issue, but does not see the need for consultation with activists Nor does he believe that this “revolt” against the Catalan quota, which is already being joined by socialist federations such as La Mancha, Castillano-Leones and Extremadura, will end in “a crisis without a party.”

In any case, “I am convinced that my party will raise this debate in its internal forums” when the time comes “because” it has always done so”, he stressed regarding the request of his counterpart from Extremadura, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, that Sánchez convene the Federal Political Council in which all the socialist barons are represented. However, consider that where the issue is really going to be discussed is in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council“who is the one who will make the final decision” as opposed to the Federal Political Council, which is only a “deliberative” body.

Asked about the voting orientation of the two Asturian socialist deputies in the event that the agreement reaches Congress through the reform of the autonomous financing law – known as Lofca -, Barbón explained that the national parliamentarians, both from the PSOE and the PP, They always stick to the script of their national executives.

Asturias joined the rebellion launched by Emiliano García-Page on Thursday. The Government of the Principality, of the PSOE in coalition with IU, has already warned Ferraz that They will take “the necessary measures” to preserve the values ​​of socialism (among which is interterritorial solidarity), announced the Asturian Minister of the Treasury, Guillermo Peláez, just one day after the Vice President, Gimena Llamedo, also declared that the position of Asturias was “clear, firm and coherent”.

Barbón resumed his political agenda yesterday after returning from vacation: “I’m not a superhero“I need to rest, but I was in constant communication,” he replied to those who criticized him for keeping silent. He did so during the Government Council that began at 9:30 a.m., at the same time as the start of the vote on the pre-agreement by the 8,500 members of Esquerra, who ratified on Friday afternoon the document signed with the CPS that opens the way to invest Illa.