In the echo that runs through the Chamber of Congress to the press stands, there are times when the political environment is not only heard, it can almost be felt.
Wednesday was one of those days.
On the bench on the right, that of the PP and Vox, there was euphoria.
A kind of early victory.
"They are smelling blood, they can already be seen in La Moncloa," commented a socialist leader.
"They are delighted with this coalition war," launched another from one of the groups that support the government, very concerned.
“Feijóo has given a very clear instruction: it is time to be calm, wait.
They are killing themselves by themselves”, pointed out a PP parliamentarian.
Some could not stand the anxiety.
"You're dead!" Popular deputy José Ignacio Echániz yelled at Pedro Sánchez with his thumb pointing downwards.
"Politically dead," he later clarified on Twitter.
"Let Txapote vote for you," another PP parliamentarian launched at him, in line with what the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, said.
The stands on the right were especially accelerated, far from those apparent instructions of the popular leader to remain calm.
They seemed convinced that the abyss into which the coalition has emerged due to its confrontation with the reform of the
law of only yes is yes
it will sink the government and cause it to lose the elections.
But in politics several actors always play.
In the Executive they are aware of the damage that the situation is causing and they are moving to redirect it.
Not only within the coalition, but also in the majority groups there have been movements of all kinds in the last few hours to try to appease a crisis that threatens to sink the image of the Government at the worst possible moment, three months before decisive municipal elections. and autonomous.
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The controversy over the "only yes is yes law" flies over the debate on the "trans law" in the Senate
After the failure of the negotiation between the ministers of Justice, Pilar Llop, of the socialist sector, and of Equality, Irene Montero, of Unidas Podemos, who have not reached an agreement in two long months of meetings and exchanges of proposals, the issue has already He has left Justice and enters Parliament, with which the interlocutors change.
Félix Bolaños, Minister of Relations with the Parliament and great negotiator for Sánchez, and María Jesús Montero, Minister of Finance and Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE, have taken the reins and have already begun to call the spokespersons for the majority, those who supported the
law of only yes is yes,
to start a negotiation on the reform.
With the PP, which has offered to support her, they are not talking.
Politically it would be very difficult to manage if the reform came out only with the support of the popular.
That is why the Socialists try to convince the maximum number of partners possible, also to try to demonstrate that Podemos has locked itself into an idea that the PSOE does not share, that is, that Llop's proposal changes the essence of the law.
Llop has been widely criticized internally in the PSOE for some of his public interventions, especially the interview on Cadena SER on Tuesday, where he said that "it is very easy to prove violence, a small wound is enough."
No one liked her intervention because she broke the socialist strategy of lowering her tone and helped Podemos to defend that the change will make trials for sexual assault turn on whether or not there was violence, something that Llop insists is not real.
In any case, the minister will lose prominence in this phase and it will be María Jesús Montero, who was already very much on top of the last days of the previous negotiation, and Bolaños himself who will lead the attempt to close this wound as soon as possible.
Llop has the full support of the president, La Moncloa insists, and is the only one that has put a viable solution on the table.
But now they will negotiate more political profiles.
Even so, they point out in Sánchez's environment, this negotiation is more complex than others because nobody can afford a second fiasco that results in a new interpretation of the judges contrary to the will of the legislator.
So it is not easy to vary Llop's proposal a lot without having the absolute technical guarantee that it will not cause a perverse effect when the time comes for it to be interpreted by the judges.
Sánchez has given two clear instructions.
On the one hand, you have to fix the situation.
The reform has to go ahead and be approved as soon as possible, because the citizens would not understand that the Government was left without doing anything before four hundred reductions in sentences for sexual offenders, something far removed from the intention of the
law of only yes is yes .
But on the other, you have to take care of the coalition.
The Socialists have lowered their tone a lot in the last few hours.
Llop herself, after the interview in SER, has avoided a clash with Podemos.
Irene Montero's group does continue to harshly attack Llop's reform, but the Socialists have chosen not to answer.
At least in public.
In private, the tension is very evident and some socialist deputies or territorial leaders even talk about the possibility that Sánchez will get fed up and dismiss Montero and the Minister of Social Rights and Secretary General of Podemos, Ione Belarra, but in the environment of the president They do not contemplate that scenario.
On the contrary, Sánchez's hard core seems to be working in the opposite direction, that is, in protecting the coalition.
The PSOE is not interested in a clash in the Government in the middle of the pre-campaign, much less a fracture within United Podemos among the toughest, with Montero, Belarra or Pablo Echenique at the head, against the group of Yolanda Díaz, Alberto Garzón or the Comunes , who have not openly criticized Llop's reform.
Unidas Podemos now has to make an important decision: what will vote in the admission to processing of the reform.
They could support her to open the negotiation in the Justice Commission, but first they would have to manage to reduce the tension that Podemos is putting on her statements.
Irene Montero herself insisted on Wednesday that Llop's proposal means "returning to the Penal Code of La Manada, that of violence and intimidation."
The worst possible scenario is that the war drags on and arrives with the gutted coalition on March 8, the most symbolic day for feminism, with fractured demonstrations, like last year.
There are many people working to avoid it, but no one is certain because the reform agreement continues to be as complex as it has been in the last two months.
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