Timeline of a surreal night in which the government “kidnapped” Congress until the scores were settled

The lack of control was such that, sometimes, MPs did not know what they were voting for. They doubted, they complained, they corrected, they debated with congressional lawyers and they asked, please, for five more minutes to read the flood of amendments that came into their cell phones. At one point they had about 140 and had to borrow chargers.

No one was prepared for a day like this. Long? Maybe, but not scary. And certainly not to end a vote that will clearly fail in just 72 hours. Today’s accounts are not the same as tomorrow’s. That’s how it all happened.

5:00 p.m. Start the day, punctual. Deputies and journalists are concentrated in a practically empty Congress, without major activities planned, and the general feeling is that the question will be resolved more or less quickly. There is no plenary session and everything is decided in committee, which happens every day.

Even if no one yet knows exactly what will happen to the European directive, everything indicates that the crossed vetoes of the government’s partners will cause the tax reform to decline and that the Executive will have to rely on the PP to approve. the European directive, breaking the blockage of the investiture.

It is more or less from this moment that the journalists present, still full of hope, begin to prepare their columns to be the first to publish them once the vote has been taken. They write the context of the situation, how they got there, to have part of the texts in advance and waiting to see what happens and update the parts with the latest news as quickly as possible.

5:04 p.m. The first to speak at the Commission was BNG MP Néstor Rego, followed by the rest of the parties, who began to take positions. At the beginning there are no big surprises, everyone says what has already been said so many times before, but the PP deputy, Santi Rodríguez, ends up maintaining a calculated ambiguity that no longer allows us to know if the PP would approve the decision.

The People’s Party was in favor of approving the opinion required by the European Union, but without including more tax measures. After 6 p.m., an hour after the start of the debate, the Commission takes a break where the most discussion is about what the PP will do.

7:03 p.m. Members return after the break. The PSOE, Sumar and Junts reached an agreement to negotiate several amendments and these are the first to be voted on. Right now, the situation is not yet out of control, but it is already starting to show signs that something is going to go wrong. At least for the most superstitious.

The Council of the Commission makes a mistake in counting certain votes (which are done by show of hands), the president once forgets to ask who is abstaining and launches the first discussion: the Commission rejects several amendments negotiated by the PSOE and the Socialists want these amendments to be able to be voted on separately later, as they were initially.

The PP believes that this should not be the case, because if the Commission has already canceled the transaction, they understand that it also cancels the original. The lawyer present ended up agreeing with the PSOE and the ERC deputy Pilar Valluguera asked the President of the Commission, Alejandro Soler, to please clarify this situation.

Valluguera comments that the criterion is not unified and that other commissions act by interpreting that when a transaction is canceled it is understood that the initial amendment is also canceled. It is striking that something so fundamental is not unified in Congress.

After this discussion, voting on the amendments begins separately, without compromise. Counting errors are happening again and we are starting to see which taxes from tax reform are starting to decline due to lack of support. At that point, everyone thought this impromptu parliamentary technique lesson was going to be the most interesting thing of the day.

8:30 p.m. After a long vote on dozens of amendments, the president grants a new suspension before voting on the final decision. As the situation evolves, people start telling their families, partners or friends, or even their bosses, that everything will be resolved around 9:30 p.m.

In the end, all they had to do was come back from recess and vote for people to have life plans. This is something that should be resolved quickly. What no one knew (or very few people knew) was that the government was willing to paralyze Congress for as long as necessary to try to salvage a lost vote.

9:00 p.m. Members of Parliament are beginning to realize that the vacation is lasting longer than expected. “I might not go to dinner,” said one of the PPs. He still doesn’t know that he might not be able to eat breakfast. The President of the Commission and the lawyer are in the courtyard of the Congress and when the deputies go looking for them, they enter the Government area, where neither journalists nor other deputies can enter.

The first criticisms begin, initially veiled, and it is clear that negotiation is in the air. An employee of the Ministry of Finance goes on a contact tour and starts talking with MPs from ERC, Bildu and BNG. Later he will speak with MP Junts.

Currently, there are no heavyweights from each party in the negotiations and everyone who speaks to someone from another party hangs up the phone to speak to their respective bosses.

The impression is beginning to appear that the President of the Commission has hidden in the government zone to buy time while the executive negotiates an outcome with its partners. Clearly, anger is beginning to grow among participants, particularly among the opposition.

At this stage, we can no longer count on the support of the PP to save the European directive, nor on the partners. If this figure were to decrease, the government would demonstrate that it does not have figures for a budget and Spain would be fined by the European Union.

9:40 p.m. After more than an hour of break, the President of the Commission, Alejandro Soler, leaves the government area with a worried face and heads towards the Commission. He tells those who come that if no one “eats” him, he will suggest that the break be until 11 p.m.

The opposition deputies do not agree, they ask if it is “at 11 o’clock in the evening or the next morning”, but they can do nothing and the Commission is suspended. This is already an unusual situation: the Government has interrupted a vote for which it does not have the necessary figures to continue negotiations.

The deputies then take advantage of the moment to go out to the bars around Congress to have dinner or a snack. Inside the Lower House, journalists begin buying sandwiches from a vending machine, but supplies quickly run out. There is no more dinner for everyone and the Congress cafeteria has been closed since 7:00 p.m.

10:00 p.m. The PNV spokesperson in Congress, Aitor Esteban, criticizes this day on Twitter, currently more of the short game of some and the disorder of this legislature,” he writes.

10:50 p.m. There are 10 minutes left before 11 p.m., when the committee is scheduled to resume. ERC, Bildu and BNG send a statement saying they have entered into an engagement with the government to extend the tax on energy companies.

This generates a huge contradiction, since the declaration sent by the three parties is contrary to the agreement that the government has already concluded with Junts and the PNV. The government is correcting itself and does not even guarantee that everything planned will take place because the positions of the partners seem irreconcilable and, even if the Commission’s vote is saved, it will fall in plenary session next Thursday.

In any case, the deputies are starting to return to Congress because it is approaching 11 p.m., the supposed time at which the vote will take place. They don’t yet know that they are going to stay there until dawn, but their faces are already a little fed up, but with the hope that the situation will resolve quickly and they will be able to leave.

11:30 p.m. The President of the Commission still does not appear. There is, at the same time, a certain anger and a certain relaxation. A representative tells the anecdote of when she told a Minister of Health that she liked clams and the next day she brought him a Tupperware that she had cooked at home and, next to it, an usher speaks to another worker what hours they are and how their day is getting longer.

“The government agrees with Junts and PNV to eliminate the tax on energy companies. Now it agrees with ERC and Bildu, knowing that without the support of Junts and PNV there will ultimately be no “If PNV and Junts do not support it, it is a trap to save the vote and Podemos will not support it,” tweeted former Equality Minister Irene Montero.

12:30 a.m. The PP deputies complain to the lawyer present at the Commission that this cannot be the case. They ask that it continue without the president, since the Council is present, but the idea does not materialize. A deputy denounces that the Government has already canceled this commission twice (Monday and Thursday of last week) and that it is a lack of institutional respect to suspend the work of the House until the accounts are clear .

00:40. Finally, the President of the Commission returns and the vote begins. The deputies express their dissatisfaction, but this continues and the opinion is approved with the votes in favor of Junts and the PNV and the rest of the partners. Although it is known what the government offered to ERC, Bildu and BNG, it is not clear what agreement was reached with Junts and PNV.

There is a very illustrative anecdote: when the session adjourns, the president says that they will see each other “tomorrow” and the deputies correct him by saying that it is “today”, because it is already Tuesday. The deputies left the scene very angry but always with something reserved for humor: “Good evening,” said one. “It will be a good morning,” respond the others.

The commission ended practically at 1 a.m., although it had started at 5 p.m. the day before, more than 8 hours later. This is something unusual, never seen before, and the opposition accuses the government of having hijacked Congress until it obtains the accounts to approve the decision.

1h00. To crown the surreal nature of the situation, the Ministry of Finance published a press release in which it maintained its agreement with Junts. This, despite the fact that it is incompatible with the agreement with ERC and other partners. But this battle will be postponed to another day, this one has no more hours.