Pedro Sanchez This Thursday he met three regional presidents: Fernando Clavijo (Canary Islands), Jorge Azcon (Aragon) and Maria Chivite (Navarra). With the socialist, the meeting was more of a matter of courtesy: she is subordinate to the party and the question of regional financing does not concern her. He dismissed the popular man with much politeness and few commitments: from the list of 13 demands with which he arrived, This only served (and little) to increase work aid in Teruel. But he tried to seduce the Canarian with more than 400 million euros.
This is the price at which Sánchez evaluates the vote on the Budgets of the Canarian Coalition (CC), the party led by Clavijo. According to this year’s accounts, how much money should the state transfer to the islands? “There are about 400 million, President,” said the canary. GOOD “They are all already being processed”replied the man from Madrid.
Namely, 80 million in investments, other 30 million in population fixation policies, more than 45 million for employment policies, 30 million budgeted to promote it on the hard-hit island of La Palma… “And the 50 million that I offered to the islands for the issue of immigration”, declared the President of the Government, recalling his last appointment, in last August.
“No, President, there are already 160 millionand they are all certified,” Clavijo immediately responded.
Sánchez’s determination to curry favor with the island’s leader is such that his response was much more hopeful than a month and a half ago.
Then Moncloa suggested to Clavijo that if he wanted to cover all of his expenses so far, caused by the more than 32,000 migrants who have arrived on the islands so far this year, and the 6,000 unaccompanied minors who are already “overcrowded” in shelters, had to separate from the People’s Partywith whom the PSOE does not find political meeting points.
This Thursday, there was none of that. On the contrary, Clavijo will return to Madrid imminently, probably next week, to personally meet the first vice-president, María Jesús Monteroto close the economic transfer of state support to the Canary Islands. According to informed sources, this huge sum of money is unlikely to be reached, which has left the island’s coffers “with cobwebs”, but “he will be close”.
In total, Sanchez will therefore be transferred to the islands between 400 and 500 million “before the end of the year”.
Because the leader of the Canary Islands Coalition (CC) has two things that the President of the Government wants: the first, an alliance with the Canarian People’s Party, which he would like to break. And the second, a vote in Congress, that of representative Cristina Validowhich is worth its weight in gold if, finally, Montero dares to present some budgets to Congress.
“Singular treatment” in the Canary Islands
The president has already obtained the vote of the Canarian Coalition in the elections investmentin exchange for signing the call “Canarian Agenda”. And from these commitments are born these debts. Because Clavijo asked this Thursday for a gesture of “goodwill” in exchange for being asked for his own.
In November 2023, the PSOE obtained that a formation that governed with the PP (and continues to do so) in its region, which had voted in favor of the “failed investiture” of Alberto Nuñez Feijóo two months earlier, and openly opposed to amnesty, he had voted in favor of Sánchez’s re-election.
And he achieved this despite the confrontation with the insular PSOE. Because the Canarian nationalists had ousted the socialists from the government during the regional elections a year and a half ago, with enormous anger at this “betrayal” of the president at the time, Ángel Víctor Torres.
The current Minister of Territorial Policy was present at the meeting and it was he who responded to Clavijo during the press conference that followed in Moncloa. But neither he nor the Canarian nationalist really explained to the media the intra-history of the event.
Although the unresolved migration crisiscrossed reproaches, broken negotiations, requirements of the prosecutor’s office and the protocols appealed to the Constitutional Court, Sánchez asked Clavijo what it would take to become friends again…
Regarding the immigration crisis, Clavijo now finds himself in an uncomfortable situation. He cannot attack the PP head-on, with which he governs, but reproaches Miguel Tellado for “huge mistake”according to sources close to the Canarian, to have suspended negotiations with the government.
The island’s leader demanded from the President of the Government “unique treatment” for the islands, as border regionwhich must be recognized as having different circumstances than the peninsula on the coast whose beaches do not face south.
Sánchez, scalded by CC’s latest misdeeds in Congress, which caused him to lose key votesnot only proposed the meeting with Montero to please Clavijo and fill his coffers. He also promised an effort to find an agreement with popular parties “for the good of unaccompanied minors”.
CC’s key vote
A little over a month ago, this newspaper reported that Pedro Sanchez had designed a complex strategy to link the negotiation of budgets with that of the Catalan concert, regional financing and the tax reform pending with the EU in an attempt not to lose its partners. A few days later, Moncloa announced a series of “bilateral meetings” with regional presidents, some after six years of waiting.
It was the first link in a chain of events, preceded by the challenge launched by the president to Congress, when, in his speech before the federal commission of the PSOE, he declared that he was ready to govern for three more years “with or without the help of Parliament. “. And then obvious gestures according to which “Sanchez wants above all to publish the 2025 budget”, as a source close to the socialist leader explains to this newspaper.
From the meeting with Sánchez, Clavijo promised a million dollars in exchange for his vote on the budget which, given the parliamentary precariousness of Sanchez could be decisive.
The seven votes of the Juntas are the key. But those of Carles Puigdemontdissatisfied with the ineffectiveness of the amnesty granted to their boss, cannot afford to overthrow Sánchez… nor, perhaps, to vote against the public accounts, which are the key to Catalan fiscal sovereignty.
“Special funding” was promised by Sánchez to the ERC, but the pro-independence right has been demanding it since the time of Arthur Mas.
SO an abstention from the seven Juntas would make Valido’s vote the key to having a 2025 budget. And with them, the guarantee of a long term for Sánchezto help unblock the criminal oblivion of Puigdemont.
