The Government stumbles in the Senate before a clamp between the PP and the independentistas

There is nothing permanent in the life of this government, which the week before left Congress with its majority reinforced and, a few days later, has suffered three skids in a row in the Senate.

An unforeseen coincidence between the PP, the Catalan independence movement and some leftist groups in the upper house has delayed the final approval of three important laws, that of the

, that of science and the one that reforms bankruptcy processes in companies.

Between Tuesday and this Wednesday, the Senate has inflicted several defeats on the Government and has approved amendments to the three projects, which must be examined again in Congress at the turn of the summer.

Tuesday had already happened with the laws of sexual freedom and science, and this Wednesday it has happened again with the bankruptcy.

In all three cases, the PP and the independentistas joined their votes and frustrated the Executive's desire to leave the texts ready for their entry into force before the holidays.

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A maneuver of the PP in the Senate delays the entry into force of the law of 'only yes is yes'

The last word on laws always rests with Congress.

The projects approved there go to the Senate for a "second reading" and, if they undergo any modification, they must return to the lower house for final approval.

The government often tries to prevent senators from introducing amendments in order to speed up the passage of laws.

And this attitude of the Executive frequently bothers groups in the upper house, who complain that in this way the role of the Senate as a "second reading" forum is completely diluted.

Criticism was heard again from the mouths of several spokesmen during the last plenary session of the Lower House before the holidays, which ended on Wednesday, and it did not remain a simple lament: the Executive was punished with a triple defeat.

The most substantial change for the Government was the tax in the vote held late on Tuesday in the science law, which had come out of Congress without votes against.

ERC and Junts per Catalunya supported an amendment by the PP and withdrew from the text a provision that United We Can had included in the Lower House and that made the researchers' temporary contracts indefinite.

The Republican group had supported the measure in Congress, but changed its position in the Senate alleging that it would mean a significant increase in costs for the research programs of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

Science Minister Diana Morant expressed her disappointment at what happened and appealed to the groups to reconsider their position in Congress, where the law will not be reviewed again until September.

The changes introduced this Wednesday in the bankruptcy law are much smaller.

The four Junts amendments approved refer only to the regulation of various administrative procedures in insolvency proceedings.

They had the support of the PP, ERC and the confederal left -which groups Más Madrid and Compromís, among others-, a coincidence that led to the defeat of the Executive by a single vote.

👉 The extraordinary #PlenoSenate ended this morning after two days of debates.

▶️Video: https://t.co/GF49taMyE1

📸Images: https://t.co/nLB4dWHiih pic.twitter.com/42wkuxO9nD

– Senate of Spain (@Senadoesp) July 20, 2022

The most surprising of the succession of government setbacks in the Senate has been that of the law of comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom, known as the law of

The Government was so sure that its passage through the Upper House would be a mere procedure to ratify it that the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, went to the plenary session on Tuesday to welcome the approval of this "decisive step" in the fight against violence. sexual.

The unexpected came with a practically irrelevant amendment by Junts, which is limited to correcting the gender of a word used in the preamble of the text.

The proposal had the support of the PP, ERC, Ciudadanos and the confederal left, which sent the law back to Congress for approval in September.

Feijóo is wrong to vote

The Executive did manage to pass without problems the definitive approval of the express reform of the law of the judiciary that intends to facilitate the renewal of four magistrates of the Constitutional Court, whose mandate has expired.

In this case there was also surprise, although on the opposite political side and without any practical significance: the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, mistakenly voted in favor of an initiative harshly criticized by his party.

The debate on the text made it possible to attend a lesson on judicial independence given by a PP senator with extensive experience in the matter, Fernando de Rosa, whose career has been a constant coming and going between politics and the courts: from judge he went Minister of Justice with the Government of the popular Francisco Camps in Valencia;

then he served as vice president of the General Council of the Judiciary at the proposal of the PP;

He returned to the judiciary in 2015 to preside over the Provincial Court of Valencia and, four years later, he returned to politics as a senator.

With such baggage, De Rosa had no qualms about denouncing that the PSOE intends to "occupy" the Constitutional Court.

Moreover, he described as "fraud" the appointments of Dolores Delgado and her now substitute, Álvaro García Ortiz, as attorney generals of the State, in the first case for having previously been Minister of Justice and in the second, for having once attended a a debate organized by the Galician PSOE.