Vox comes to the aid of the Government

This time it was not variable geometry, but pure circus acrobatics.

The Government was cornered, without support before a momentous vote in Congress, that of the plan for the execution of the multimillion-dollar European fund in which all hopes of economic recovery are placed.

With the Catalan elections two weeks away and the atmosphere agitated by the candidacy of former minister Salvador Illa, ERC took out the artillery and announced its negative vote in the plenary session called for this Thursday.

The hold of Ciudadanos, which once allowed the Government to compensate for Esquerra's rejections of the extensions of the state of alarm, would not be available this time either.

Those of Inés Arrimadas had gone to no, of which the PP was immovable.

Not even the yes taken from EH Bildu and More Country seemed enough.

The Executive was heading towards a certain parliamentary defeat and the consequent embarrassment before Brussels.

The saving stunt came then from where it could least be expected: from Vox, which with its abstention allowed the Government to save a crucial trance.

Santiago Abascal's party followed to the letter the basic manual of revenge: the best thing is to serve them cold.

Three months after the PP destroyed Vox's motion of censure with a brutal attack by Pablo Casado, it was time for revenge for the far-right party.

And like then, the ambush fell by surprise, although now with the roles changed.

Vox's abstention, which justified it by responsibility with the possible beneficiaries of the European money, left the PP with the image of a more obstructionist party even than the extreme right.

A blow on the eve of the campaign for the Catalan elections, in which some polls place Vox with the possibility of surpassing the PP.

Everything has been turned upside down in the Congress of Deputies since the call for the elections in Catalonia.

The Government, which had ended 2020 with what seemed like a solid majority, already received a notice last Monday in the Permanent Council of the Chamber.

That day, the Executive lost four votes, three of them destined to demand Illa accounts before leaving Health.

And already then the PP and ERC agreed in their tactics against the Government.

The true scope of

be known on F-14, although for now there is already a tangible consequence: it has roused ERC and, to a lesser extent, Ciudadanos.

Esquerra continued to warm up engines on Wednesday and announced, with a tweet from his spokesman in Madrid, Gabriel Rufián, that he would vote against the European funds plan in the extraordinary plenary session of Congress that this Thursday had to validate five decrees approved by the Government in December.

"Its real author is the CEOE and gives all the money to the Ibex," wrote Rufián.

Vertigo settled in the Government, which opened negotiations in a hurry with other minor parties.

The Executive reached the plenary session after having closed agreements with EH Bildu and Más País.

The decree on funds would be processed as a bill, allowing groups to amend it.

But the PP was not willing to give air to the Government.

And this time neither Citizens, who was not even going to stay in a simple abstention.

The accounts did not go out to the person in charge of the negotiations, the first vice president, Carmen Calvo: more than half of the Chamber seemed to be against it.

Nobody, of course, thought about Vox, with its systematic opposition to everything that comes from the “social communist government”.

Not much less after listening to his spokesman, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, intervene in the plenary session.

Espinosa de los Monteros is one of the less strident deputies of Vox and began his speech by stressing that the management of these funds is "decisive" for Spain to overcome the crisis.

But, then, he harshly chased the government, which he accused of devising a management system that will create the "largest client network in history."

Minutes later, in the bustling corridors of the Chamber, Espinosa de los Monteros left the journalists speechless when he announced what would be the vote of his group: “Abstain is the most sensible thing to do.

Every day that passes there is a merchant that is closing.

We want the aid to arrive as soon as possible ”.

The decree was finally going to come forward with an unlikely carambola: the yes of EH Bildu and the abstention of Vox, the "proetarras" and the "neo-fascists" (that's what they call each other) together to save the Government.

As amazing as then hearing Carmen Calvo thank those who contributed to the approval "indirectly", in clear allusion to the extreme right.

The vote that hung by a thread ended up being quite loose: 170 in favor, 126 against and 52 abstentions, those of Vox.

The two government parties were joined by PNV, EH Bildu, Más País, Compromís, Coalición Canaria, Nueva Canarias, Regionalist Party of Cantabria and Teruel Existe.

The rest of the decrees were also approved, including the one that temporarily stops evictions, harshly dismissed by the right as "an attack on private property."

The triumph, however, was accompanied by a cataract of reproaches.

Most of the groups, starting with the PP, accused the Government of acting with opacity, of trying to manage the funds without being accountable to Congress and of creating legal uncertainty due to its proposal to relax administrative and environmental procedures to act with more agility.

The left, even the one that supported the decree, dropped its suspicions that the plan favors large companies, which heralds new and arduous negotiations when it is processed as a bill.

But the real battle was on the right.

The PP was launched on Twitter to the jugular of Vox.

Its general secretary, Teodoro García Egea, distributed a photographic montage with Abascal's image on a PSC poster.

In the hemicycle, the secretary general of Vox, Javier Ortega Smith, recovered the somewhat forgotten label of "cowardly right" to attack the PP.

"After what they have done today, who is the right coward?", Replied the popular Carlos Rojas.

Amused by the show, Joan Baldoví, the Compromís deputy, said with a laugh: "I smell napalm in the ranks on the right."

As in October, after Vox's motion of censure, the one Casado left on his shoulders for standing up to the extreme right.