It was an almost personal endeavor of Pedro Sánchez.
He wanted at all costs to draw up the 2024 Budget, even though it would last at most six months.
A part of the Government, with Óscar Puente at the head, insisted that it was not worth it: better to go directly to look for those of 2025, calmly, with less risk of failure.
But Sánchez wanted those of 2024 as it were for an above all political objective.
He intended to definitively answer the big question that haunts him in the most difficult of his three terms: can this hold up?
Around eight in the afternoon last Wednesday, the alerts sounded on the cell phones of the three Sumar representatives who had just left the offices of the Ministry of Finance on Alcalá Street, in the heart of Madrid.
For two hours, Joaquín Pérez Rey, Yolanda Díaz's right-hand man in the Ministry of Labor, and deputies Manuel Lago and Carlos Martín had been doing numbers with the minister's chief of staff, Carlos Moreno.
The next day the amnesty law was going to be approved in Congress, and the way for the new Budgets seemed clear.
For two hours, the teams of the two Government partners talked mainly about the funds available for social items.
When they were leaving with the feeling of having made progress in the negotiation, the alerts went off like a blow: they had just wasted their time.
The Moncloa announced his resignation from negotiating the Budgets.
The early call for elections in Catalonia, after the Parliament knocked down other accounts, in this case those of the Generalitat, forced Sánchez to give up his efforts.
That Wednesday had begun with a fetid atmosphere permeating the plenary hall of Congress.
It seemed that the political confrontation could not go beyond the levels reached with the amnesty law, but the
Koldo case
was still to come .
The brutal attack by the PP with that scandal of charging illegal commissions on the purchase of masks that hits the PSOE led to a sordid debate in which the two main parties even exchanged accusations of drug trafficking and prostitution.
“I thought I had seen everything in Congress, but I was still missing this,” one of the most senior deputies in the Chamber confessed two days later, still in amazement.
In this environment of wild confrontation, three electoral calls are coming up in three months: on April 21 in Euskadi, on May 12 in Catalonia and on June 9 the European elections throughout Spain.
It is almost an axiom among political scientists that one of the reasons for the channeling of the political debate lies in the state of permanent campaign in which the parties live.
Before the summer, Spain will have completed six within a year, one for every two months.
After the agreement on the amnesty law was closed last week, the vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, believed that she could have the Budgets in a few weeks.
Contacts had already been made with all the groups and the feelings were good.
Although ERC had been warning since the weekend: everything is fine, as long as we have Budgets in Catalonia.
The leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, also warned Sánchez: “Be careful, the Catalan Budgets may not work out.”
The commons, Sumar's local brand, threatened to vote against if the Hard Rock project, a macro tourist complex in Tarragona that would include the largest casino in Europe, was not abandoned.
Despite everything, in ERC they still believed that the commons were bluffing.
On Monday there was a lot of movement in Madrid.
And Tuesday was hectic.
Montero asked Ernest Urtasun, Catalan Minister of Culture and spokesperson for Sumar, to intercede with his fellow members of the Commons.
Urtasun told him that it was Illa who was committed to Hard Rock.
“You have to convince your people,” Montero begged him.
“You are the ones who have to convince Illa,” Urtasun replied.
Sánchez and Díaz did not talk about the matter.
But this tension left strong mistrust among government partners.
The socialists criticize the second vice president for not controlling her political space and allowing her people to inflict a defeat on an essential ally like ERC.
Sumar is not a typical party, but a kind of confederation in which the common people enjoy full autonomy.
“Here we don't operate by command,” they allege at the top of the formation.
Those from Díaz are convinced that it was Illa, favorite in the polls, who wanted to force elections and Sánchez decided not to stop him.
The leader of the PSC, despite everything, tried to dissuade the commoners: “You are doing Aragonès [Pere,
president
and leader of ERC] a favor, you are giving him the excuse to move forward.”
But Ada Colau's group did not believe it and sought to reinforce its political profile with a "no" to the megacasino.
The result of all these crossed games has been to ruin Sánchez's plans and return to the uncertainty that already seemed dissipated.
With the approval of the amnesty, pending its passage through the Senate, it was hoped that the legislature would start once and for all after three months bogged down in the processing of that law.
The electoral marathon slows everything down again, to the despair of Díaz and his followers, who hoped to recover their lost profile by once again putting the Executive's social policy at the forefront.
And all this in the poisoned atmosphere that was reflected in the tremendous control sessions in the Senate and Congress this week: the PP repeating like a mantra that the socialists are dedicated to “coca and prostitution”;
Sánchez demanding the resignation of Isabel Díaz Ayuso for the tax fraud of her boyfriend and blaming Alberto Núñez Feijóo for her old friendship with a Galician smuggler who ended up in jail for drug trafficking;
the leader of the PP targeting the president's wife for her professional relations with Air Europa, one of the tourism sector companies rescued by the Government... All of this that scared even the most seasoned deputies.
Some members of the Government consulted admit that this poisoned atmosphere usually harms the left.
The right is hypermobilized to oust Sánchez and has not suffered electoral costs for raising the bar or reaching the “let Txapote vote for you” in the regional and municipal elections of 2023. On the other hand, the extension of “everyone is equal”, the idea of that politics is something toxic, it tends to demobilize the left.
Even so, socialist members of the Government defend that Sánchez has to respond to the attacks and even more so when the case has arisen of the alleged tax crime of the Ayuso couple and their millionaire commissions also for contracts for the sale of masks in the middle of the pandemic, while the PP continues to hit day and night with the
Koldo case
.
“We already know that this environment is not good for us, but we can never lose face,” says a member of the Executive.
“In 2023 we decided to move on from the attacks of the PP and Vox and cling to the management,” summarizes another minister.
“And that led us to lose almost all of our territorial power in the regional and municipal governments.
Sánchez decided to come out of the cave, answer, and thus we managed to govern again after the general elections.
What is the alternative, bowing your head while they say that your leader is corrupt when we have asked our former organization secretary [José Luis Ábalos, now in the Mixed Group] for the minutes without him being charged with anything?
We do not do it".
That descent into the mud of Sánchez and his team has, however, caused deep displeasure in Sumar.
Díaz expressed this in the control session, when, minutes after the verbal carnage between the president and Feijóo, he had to intervene and warned that he was not going to "participate in a spectacle" that, he declared, "erodes democracy."
“This is lethal for us,” they lament in the minority part of the Government.
Parliamentary allies have so far sought to stay out of the fray.
Among them, they appreciate that Sánchez acted quickly to hold Ábalos accountable, but the president's bellicose attitude also makes some of them uncomfortable.
The CIS barometer this week revealed data that fuels critics of the socialist strategy: when citizens are asked about the country's main problem, the most cited is “the Government and specific parties or politicians” (11%) and in third place “the bad behavior of the parties” (10.4%).
The outlook is still likely to worsen with the electoral campaigns.
The PP has bet everything on the European elections, which it wants to turn into a plebiscite.
Precisely for this reason, Sánchez, although it was not his plan A, hopes to get oxygen first with the Catalans, where all the polls place the PSC as the favorite.
The idea has been established in Feijóo's leadership that Sánchez's political situation is unsustainable and that if they force the machine, the Government could fall.
The two big parties raise the tone more and more.
And there is still the main dish: in the middle of the electoral environment, up to five parliamentary investigation commissions will be launched.
In Congress there will be four, one of them on the dirty war that the PP Government once organized against the independence movement and another on the contracts for the purchase of masks by all Administrations.
The latter will have its counterpoint in the Senate, where the PP will focus exclusively on the
Koldo case
.
The two are going to look askance at each other and the appearances can be of the highest level.
The PP will most certainly take the president of Congress, the socialist Francina Armengol, for her management as head of the Balearic Government and it is not ruled out to even call Sánchez or her wife.
Among those summoned in Congress may be Ayuso or Feijóo himself as former Galician president.
The question that Sánchez wanted to resolve with the Budgets—does this hold up?—is still up in the air.
And no one among the parliamentary allies dares to answer him.
“Everything is extremely unstable, things change from one week to the next,” says a deputy from one of the nationalist groups.
“In the majority of investitures we also have two unpredictable forces: Junts and Podemos.”
Regarding the impact of the upcoming elections, there is no fear of the consequences of the Basque elections.
Whatever happens, PNV and EH Bildu indicate their intention to continue supporting Sánchez.
Even if the
Abertzale
left managed to surpass the PNV as the first force and the PSOE closed its path by renewing – as seems predictable – its agreement with Andoni Ortuzar's party, Arnaldo Otegi's party will maintain its strategy in Madrid.
The Catalans are something else.
Because there, even a great success for the PSC could be counterproductive for Sánchez if that translated into leaving one of the two pro-independence formations out of power.
Especially taking into account the unpredictable nature of Junts to which all the other parliamentary allies of the Executive allude.
It is the socialists who insist on ensuring that this holds.
“No one in Catalonia would forgive Junts or ERC for overthrowing the Government and making way for the right and the extreme right,” comments a minister.
“Pujol began his decline when he agreed with Aznar.
Now it would be much worse.
And even if the amnesty is approved in May, it must be applied afterwards, and they know what it would be like with a PP and Vox Government.
There is no incentive for them to destroy the legislature.
There is a Government for a while.”
Against the appearance of paralysis, the PSOE highlights that there are a dozen laws in Congress that are being worked on with all its partners: artistic teachings, efficiency in justice, cinema, against money laundering, against pimping, parity, prohibition of mortgage evictions, public health agency, right to defense, families, sustainable mobility and copyright.
The Budgets have fallen, but most of them have not been broken, they emphasize.
“Everything is devilish, it is useless to deny it, but we have our assets to maintain the legislature.
Nobody wants to break up,” they insist in La Moncloa.
Sánchez, tied since the beginning of the legislature to the motto of “making necessity a virtue,” seems convinced that the new scenario, even if he did not seek it, can benefit him.
Since the pandemic, he has had many disastrous election nights - Madrid, Andalusia, regional, local, Galician - and a few - two - happy ones.
In the latter he always had a great protagonist: Catalonia.
All the socialists' cards are played in the square that was already key for José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, before for Felipe González and now again so that Sánchez can, finally, ensure that this really holds up.
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