Step to the budgets as a general rehearsal of the legislature

Hours and hours of debate, chapters, sections, amendments, speeches by all ministers in defense of the accounts of their departments that will culminate this Thursday.

These four days, from morning to night in the plenary session of Congress, plus dozens of hours in the previous step, the commission, culminate with the approval of the Budgets for 2021, heading to the Senate.

Their importance is not only because they are the accounts that will replace the distant Budgets, in time and in circumstances, of 2018, but because they will involve the general rehearsal of the legislature with new actors.

If there are no setbacks, the Budgets will be approved by 189 votes in favor by joining the government coalition, ERC, PNV, Bildu, the four deputies from PdECAT, Más País, Compromís, PRC, Nueva Canarias and Teruel Existe.

Millions of euros for all autonomous communities, for all areas, with fruitful negotiations for everyone except the PP, Citizens and Vox;

and especially, for Basque and Catalan nationalists and independentists.

There are concretions, but also a declaration of intentions and commitments without setting a date, regardless of the Budgets.

Oblivious to reality, it would turn out to be assumed by the leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, that the government throws "smoke screens" to reduce the visibility of the problems.

It was his response this Wednesday to a bill by the PSOE and United We Can, to limit the functions of the General Council of the Judiciary when its mandate has concluded.

It is not a smokescreen, neither that nor the agreement on Wednesday to stop evictions until May, at the end of the state of alarm.

It will be a way of acting with new actors for the legislature although there are other immediate motivations: the Catalan elections.

In this area, the views of the PSOE and United We Can are not identical.

In Comú Podem pressures United We Can and these to the PSOE.

The former are in a hurry so that before the February 14 elections the

prisoners

are free, either for a pardon or for a change in the crime of sedition.

The dizzying pace of "the commons" and United We Can will not be followed by the Prime Minister or the Socialist ministers.

There have been requests from the pro-independence and nationalist groups more close at hand for Moncloa, such as budget items for the Basque Country and Catalonia, although the Catalan electoral competition is as a backdrop.

Even with struggles, never in the last 24 years have Budgets had so much support.

Only the resounding no of the first opposition party to the government accounts remains unchanged.

Now the PP, before the PSOE.

And so for four decades.

The devastating effects of the pandemic have not modified such consolidated behavior.