The Government, with no alternative to the alarm in Madrid due to the pandemic

History repeats itself.

The Government did not design any legal mechanism, nor does it believe that it is possible to do so, in the face of an autonomy that is declared in practice in absentia before the common policy against the coronavirus, as they believe in the Executive that Madrid has done.

The state of alarm subsides on Saturday and La Moncloa has no legal alternatives.

The extension is practically ruled out - it would be a parliamentary hell - and the Health strategy passes, as it was two weeks ago, to agree on common measures for all of Spain on Wednesday and trust that Madrid will correctly make the order to apply them this time.

The focus is on Vox's motion of censure, but the Government has another priority that is more difficult to resolve.

The Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, has multiplied his daily contacts with counselors from all the autonomous regions to achieve a consensus that seeks a solution to the day after the end of the state of alarm in Madrid, a time bomb with a specific deadline: next Saturday at 3:00 p.m., 15 days after its entry into force.

Extension was never a real option.

It requires a majority in Congress that the government is not sure it will get.

And in Health they insist that it is not necessary.

Illa's strategy goes a different way than alarm.

In reality, it is very similar to what he tried two weeks ago: to take the decision to the Interterritorial Health Council, scheduled for Wednesday, and thus force its application whether or not Madrid agrees.

Before that key appointment on Wednesday, which could be as stormy as two weeks ago, today there will be a technical meeting to prepare it.

There it will be seen how Madrid and the PP communities breathe.

Illa is negotiating with everyone a formula in the form of traffic lights, but with flexibility because counselors from different formations are asking for margin so as not to have to confine an entire town of 10,000 or 20,000 inhabitants for a very localized outbreak in a nursing home, for example.

The negotiation is intense, but the unknown of Madrid remains, divided by the tensions between its regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and vice president Ignacio Aguado.

Madrid government sources indicate that they will bet again on the confinement by health areas - which Health does not see reasonable - and they hope to reach Wednesday with an incidence below 300 infections per 100,000 inhabitants.

They seem ready to fight.

That system of making the decision in the Interterritorial Health and thus forcing Madrid to comply with it worked until the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid overturned the order of the Community that executed that decision.

The laws have not changed since then.

And in La Moncloa they discard a modification to change them, but they believe that the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso will not be able to circumvent the instructions as it did the other time with a simple trick: base the order of the Community that executes them on a law of 2003 and not in 1986, the one used by the rest of the autonomous communities without causing legal problems.

The situation, from a legal and political point of view, is very complicated, according to government sources.

The legal system that was designed, and which in La Moncloa they consider sufficient to face the pandemic, is not designed for rebellious communities.

In May, the first vice president, Carmen Calvo, announced that the government had ready several reforms of up to four laws to have them approved in the fall, when the second wave would arrive.

However, that project was parked, according to Executive sources, because there was not enough political support and the tension with the PP was strong after its rejection of the last two extensions of the state of alarm.

The PP has always reproached this decision of the Government.

Pablo Casado's group continues to think that this legal modification of the 1986 health law is necessary in order to have an alternative to the state of alarm.

The team led by Ana Pastor, spokesperson for the PP in Health and a former minister, has prepared a bill, which will try to vote shortly in Congress.

In it he raises these modifications to grant more powers to Health without the need for a state of alarm.

However, the government does not see this reform of the PP favorably.

Above all, for a delicate matter: it avoids judicial control of key decisions to limit rights.

La Moncloa experts believe that it is very risky to open the door to this limitation of rights from a law without the absolutely exceptional instrument and with parliamentary control that the state of alarm supposes, which had only been used once in all democracy before the pandemic.

The Government opted in June for another legal route, agreed with the autonomous communities - including those of the PP - which was the so-called New Normal Decree.

There, all decisions were directed to the Interterritorial Health Council.

Another modification was made whereby all legal decisions to deal with outbreaks go directly to the endorsement in the Autonomous Superior Courts of Justice instead of the ordinary judges.

With these two legs, according to the Executive, all the situations in 16 of the 17 autonomies have been resolved.

Ourense, Lleida, Palencia and many other towns have been closed without problems.

But the system did not foresee that an autonomous community, as Madrid did, go to court against one of these orders.

And furthermore, he transposed it the wrong way.

That is, he did not foresee rebellion.

And he still does not foresee it.

If Madrid wanted to reach the limit by voting against the decisions taken on Wednesday, taking them back to court and transposing them so that they can be overthrown again, it is impossible to stop them.

The Government is confident that this time it will be different.

The play would be too obvious.

And throughout Spain and throughout Europe, much more drastic measures are being taken than in Madrid.

But no one has guarantees that the political bomb the community has become will not explode again this weekend.

Health would still have one last emergency solution: declare another state of alarm for another 15 days, not as an extension but as a new rule, later, without a vote from Congress.

Nobody believes, at the moment, that things can go that far.