Ángel Collado
Pedro Sánchez has secured a comfortable passage for the draft General State Budget that guarantees him another year of stability in power, until the elections next autumn, after giving in to all the demands of his partners and allies.
The President of the Government once again leaves the flag of the most populist feminism in the hands of Podemos with the so-called “trans law” and ratifies for another five years the fiscal privileges of the Basque nationalist Executive.
For the Catalan pro-independence supporters, he advanced his support for vetoing the Spanish language in the regional education system, and for the heirs of ETA’s political wing, Bildu, he continues with the penitentiary benefits for imprisoned terrorists.
Over and above any ideological, strategic considerations or medium-term party interests, Sánchez is ensuring stability in the government for the remainder of the legislature with approved accounts that make any other project for which he could not obtain the same parliamentary majority secondary.
Regardless of the fact that his partners may dissociate themselves from the government prematurely, he thus retains the ability to run out his term of office, which ends in November 2023, or to bring forward the elections if he is interested in doing so.
The head of the coalition Cabinet is so relaxed about the first parliamentary procedure for the approval of the budget, the debate on the budget set for this Wednesday in Congress, that he will not even go to the Chamber of Deputies. After rushing to meet the demands of his populist and separatist allies, his official trip to Kenya and South Africa between the 25th and 28th was confirmed. Sánchez will become the first prime minister to skip the debate in Congress on the main bill that the Cortes has to pass each year.
Only the first opposition party, the PP, plus Vox, Ciudadanos and some members of the Mixed Group have signed amendments to the bill. In total they account for 159 MPs compared to the 155 of the government coalition made up of the Socialists and the far-left Podemites in a Congress of 350 members.
The Catalan and Basque pro-independence parties, almost fixed allies of the government (around another 25 MPs) are reserving the right to press for more demands in the following partial amendment procedures, but for this week they are satisfied and rule out putting Sánchez on the spot.
In the government they boast how easy it is to approve the budget after Sánchez settled in less than 48 hours the last conflict that arose with Podemos, which threatened to delay everything. The socialists threatened to drag out and amend the draft “trans law” drafted under Podemos’ principles on so-called “gender self-determination”, which the feminists of the PSOE reject.
The head of de Executive once again overruled the voices of his own party, led by former vice-president Carmen Calvo, who oppose the possibility of children and adolescents being able to decide to change their sex without going through any professional or family filter. To avoid any problems, Sánchez ordered to follow the podemite guidelines on the matter set by his Minister for Equality, Irene Montero.
The PNV (six deputies) at the same time renounced to present an amendment to the whole of the Budget by reaching an agreement with the Government to renew the autonomous quota with the Basque Country (the contribution to the central Administration) “in the same terms and parameters” as the one agreed with the previous Executive, that of Mariano Rajoy in 2017.
Despite the threat of economic recession and the generalised rise in taxes for the rest of Spaniards, the Basque nationalists are guaranteed not to have to increase their government’s contribution to the state coffers. Five years ago, the PSOE criticised the same agreement as discriminatory towards the other regions, a ‘cuponazo’ at the service of the interests of the PP Cabinet that went against the general interest of the country. The current Minister of Finance and then Andalusian regional minister, María Jesús Montero, who is now a signatory of the agreement, stood out in that denunciation.
Bildu, the heir to ETA’s political wing, with five deputies, has also had its demands met in recent days when the Ministry of the Interior transferred 11 other terrorists serving sentences in other Spanish provinces to prisons in the Basque Country. There are only 12 members of the gang who are not close to their homes and, moreover, some thirty of those transferred to Basque prisons are already enjoying semi-liberty.
In the case of Esquerra Republicana de Cataluña (13 deputies in Congress), Sánchez allows the president of the Generalitat of the same party, Pere Aragonés, to manoeuvre to avoid complying with the Supreme Court ruling that obliges the regional education system to include Castilian as a vehicular language.
It is only a question of teaching 25 percent of the subjects in the common language of the Spanish people, but the pro-independence supporters are closed-minded, only admitting teaching in Catalan and wanting to maintain the consideration of Spanish as a foreign language, even though it is the mother tongue of half of the Catalans.
But ERC has reserved another demand for the following budgetary procedures: the reduction of sentences for the crime of sedition, the one committed by their leaders in the separatist attempt on 1 October 2017. The permanent dissatisfaction of the nationalists in general is always followed by Sánchez’s generosity, which is even more pronounced these days in view of the fact that 2023 is going to be an election year.
