The last big stone in the path of the coalition government

In public they do not admit it easily, but in private most members of the Government assume that the end of 2022 and the start of 2023 were very bad political moments for the Executive.

One of the worst in the almost five years that Pedro Sánchez has been at La Moncloa.

The controversial embezzlement reform dominated the end of last year and the

, the start of this.

However, once the harsh political winter is over, the Executive transmits a completely different feeling in spring.

The Government has accumulated positive milestones in recent weeks, especially in economic data, which has completely changed the environment.

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Sánchez pushes for Sumar and Podemos to unite and "fit all the pieces of the puzzle"

Now, in La Moncloa they are convinced that it is the PP who accumulates problems due to the mistakes of its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

Especially since the fundamental economic data, with an Easter that is returning to pre-pandemic occupancy levels, have dismantled the main element that the popular ones counted on to return to La Moncloa, as in 2011: the economic collapse.

"The opposition bet on the apocalypse and now that it has not arrived they are baffled," summed up Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday in an informal conversation with journalists, back from a trip to Cyprus, Malta and Italy.

All governments tend to be exaggeratedly optimistic about themselves, but there are some objective data that encourage this change of environment that comes at a key moment, when everything already smells like an electoral campaign for May 28, which will accelerate after the break from Easter week.

Inflation, which has been devouring wages for a year and a half and, with them, the Government's own economic credibility, slowed down in March to 3.3%.

The price of food, the one that does the most damage to working families, and the one that wears out the Executive the most, is still far from being controlled.

But the Government still has room for action.

Moncloa and the economic team are internally discussing the next package of measures against the effects of the war in Ukraine, which should be approved in June, when the current plan decays, and could begin to be known in May, in the middle of the electoral period.

And in all the discussions is a crash plan against the increase in food prices that could include a bonus for the middle class.

Any type of aid that offsets the devastating effect of a soaring shopping basket, variable mortgages with increases of up to 40% and wages with increases well below last year's inflation.

But the most relevant figure, the one that encourages the optimism of the Executive, is that of employment.

The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, Sánchez's right-hand man, exhibited on Saturday a piece of information that the Government will repeat like a mantra throughout the campaign: “There is joy, there is optimism, there is a Spain that looks to the future.

This Holy Week is being extraordinary.

We have created 300,000 jobs in the first quarter of the year.

And in front of us we have an opposition grumbling because Spain is doing well.

Let them arm themselves with patience, because in 2023 the Spanish are going to do better”.

300,000 is not just any number.

It has many reminiscences.

In the first quarter of 2012, the first of the Government of Mariano Rajoy, just 300,000 jobs were destroyed.

Exactly the same ones that have been created now.

And in the last year of the PSOE in government, 2011, 256,000 jobs had also been destroyed in that first quarter, which used to be fateful.

The destruction of employment in the last years of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was constant;

a bomb that, added to the adjustments forced by Brussels, devoured the credibility of the PSOE and led to the worst result in its history and an overwhelming absolute majority for Rajoy at the end of 2011. Before, the PSOE had already suffered a debacle in the regional elections .

This employment issue is politically decisive.

The PP wants to repeat the 2011 scheme, with a first blow in the regional elections and a final shot in the general elections.

But the Government is absolutely convinced that, whatever the polls say now, the PP will not be able to turn around electorally if Sánchez can display positive economic management.

His campaign will be management.

That is why the president seems so determined to maintain the coalition at all costs.

Because breaking it would be associated with a failure of the Government.

He would agree with the opposition.

Worry

And that is why there is so much concern in the Executive with the enormous tension between Sumar and Podemos.

Sánchez and his team have a fairly clear plan and they are executing it depending on them and Yolanda Díaz, with whom the harmony is increasingly evident.

It consists of closing all possible management milestones —they have just done it with the pension reform and now they will resume negotiations for the housing law— to reach the regional elections with everything closed and a complete package of reforms to claim.

But that plan, which goes through putting the accent on the management, economic data or the international profile of Sánchez, which has multiplied his agenda these weeks, goes to waste with each internal war in United We Can, which quickly takes over focus.

There are several ministers who are very concerned with the scenario of a definitive rupture that will lead Podemos to stand alone in the general elections.

All the work of these months could come to nothing if the division of the left-wing bloc into three options leads to the loss of some essential seats to achieve a majority.

That is why the president, on the return trip from Rome, denied to the journalists what Pablo Iglesias insinuates: that the PSOE is trying to convince Yolanda Díaz that she is better off with Podemos than within Sumar.

He only encouraged that "all the pieces of the puzzle fit together."

Sánchez is not going to get into that hornet's nest, it is a problem that Díaz has to solve, they insist on the president's environment.

But all the ministers, not only those of United We Can, are very aware of this issue, because they believe that it is the only stone that can prevent the recovery of the Government in which they trust for the coming months, at the same rate that the economy improves.

The fundamental problem is that the solution depends on Díaz, but also on an external factor that has proven uncontrollable for both the PSOE and the second vice president: Podemos.

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