Ángel Collado
Alone in his pro-Moroccan turn and closed to state pacts to tackle the economic crisis, Pedro Sánchez is entrenched in power with some partners who act as internal opposition and a new Popular Party, the one chaired by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, which is once again in the lead in the polls.
Last week, in just three days, the president of the government dispelled all doubts and low expectations about any change in his political line despite the threat of recession and the parliamentary weakness of his cabinet.
In the absence of solid majorities, more decrees and image campaigns. Without seeking consensus even for foreign policy, and even less for lowering taxes as he admitted just two weeks earlier, the first meeting between the head of the Executive and the new president of the Popular Party was exhausted in pure protocol.
Sánchez only requires the main opposition party to agree to a quota-based distribution of the General Council of the Judiciary that allows him to apply the Frankenstein majority (PSOE, the extreme left of Podemos and the nationalist and pro-independence parties) that brought him to power in the judges’ governing body.
In the Moncloa Palace, the same script of demands applied to the PP when Pablo Casado was in power is maintained to the letter: unconditional support for the fundamental decisions of the Executive dictated by decree and cessation in the work of control and denunciation, above all for the distribution of European funds.
If Feijóo does not give in, he will be punished by all the governmental media to be considered extreme right-wing, to live pending Vox and to place himself outside the Constitution. The Sanchista machinery has already been set in motion, although Casado’s successor shows his willingness to resume talks for the renewal of the CGPJ and describes as a “joke” the Socialist’s determination to mark his policy of pacts.
In the PP they still cannot believe that the head of the Executive, who has five communist ministers in his cabinet and governs with the entire extreme left plus the pro-independence groups, coup supporters and heirs of ETA represented in Parliament, can give lessons and cards of centrism or moderation, as well as prohibiting the Popular Party from making a pact with Vox.
And if Sánchez’s demands and attitude towards the main opposition party follow a very similar line to the previous one, there are no changes in the internal regime of the coalition government either. Podemos dissents and votes in Congress against Sánchez’s pro-Moroccan turn, as do the rest of the parties represented in the House, with no other exception than the PSOE: 120 deputies of the 350 that make it up.
The head of the executive branch describes as a ‘historic milestone’ the return to the relations with Morocco that existed before his pro-Algerian lurch last year, when he welcomed the head of the Polisario Front, Brahim Gali, to the displeasure of Mohammed VI, resulting in assaults by immigrants on the Melilla border fence and the withdrawal of the ambassador.
Sánchez has dismissed this breakdown of consensus in Spanish politics with no more self-criticism than the failure to inform the main opposition party and without even commenting on his lack of internal authority in a coalition cabinet where some of its members speak out and vote against the leader’s decisions. But neither the dissidents resign from their posts nor can the man who alone is responsible for appointing and dismissing ministers sack them because he needs them to stay in office.
In contrast to Sánchez’s usual move to castle himself in the face of problems by closing himself off to pacts with the opposition and admitting internal dissidence, the polls are beginning to register changes in public opinion this April.
With Sánchez’s late and meagre response to the economic crisis that is already on the streets with inflation, the spectacle of cabinet disunity and the change of president in the PP, the polls have turned upside down. The Popular Party is in first position, as it was before Pablo Casado squandered the advantage of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s triumph in the Madrid regional elections last May.
The two main private companies in the sector, GAD-3 and Metroscopia, coincide in giving the PP an advantage in voting intentions of 3 or 4 points over a PSOE in decline, just like Podemos. And to the extent that the current left-wing coalition in power, now with 155 seats, would be left with between 122 and 128 seats, the same as the PP alone. Vox, which is slowing its rise but still has more than 50 seats, would give the right an absolute majority.
In barely a month, between the economic crisis and the rearming of the opposition with the arrival of Feijóo, the political situation has undergone changes that contrast with Sánchez’s immobility, which even includes the hackneyed argument against the opposition.
