With 12 senators, ten more than in 2019 and nine more than ERC, the PSC swept the past 23-J also in the vote -on an open list- in the Senate. The triumph of the Catalan socialists, with three parliamentarians in each province, will, however, come up against an Upper House under the control of the PP. The popular ones have obtained an absolute majority in Spain, so if, as everything indicates, they do not govern, they will want to fully use the powers of the chamber. On the other hand, in Catalonia, they neither had nor have representation.
With the election on an open list -208 senators were chosen from the 265 that have been this legislature-, the senator with the most votes in Catalonia has been Manuel Cruz (PSC) with 843,902 votes in Barcelona. The second party is ERC, which gets a representative in Barcelona, ??Joan Queralt, but nevertheless the second Republican on this list, Ernest Maragall, has been left without representation. They also achieve a senator in Lleida and Tarragona. JxCAT will have only one parliamentarian, who corresponds to Girona.
The Catalan socialists have thus turned around the situation that the polls drew for the Upper House in 2019, long leaving ERC behind and also JxCat, which four years ago obtained one more representative than the PSC.
Although primarily a territorial chamber, the Senate’s election system encourages bipartisanship. This is how Manuel Cruz commented a few days before 23-J and this is how the results can be seen. The two main formations, PP and PSOE, obtain respectively 120 and 72 representatives. While the third group in contention – the alliance of ERC and EH Bildu – has seven. The distance is considerable.
Looking at the map of Spain, the PP has achieved an absolute majority, which is accompanied by the representatives designated by the autonomies. Each province has four representatives, regardless of population. In Mallorca, Gran Canaria Tenerife there are three. Two in Ceuta and Melilla, and one in the rest of the islands. To soften the bipartisanship, each party can present a maximum of three names per constituency.
But in the context of the current electoral result, and in the scenario of a PSOE government, the PP will try to use the resources of the Senate to make opposition. As a second reading chamber, where the laws of Congress arrive to be perfected, the PP can play with the approval times, with a maximum period of two months. But always keeping in mind that each norm will return to the Lower House, which has the last word. The absolute majority in the Senate surely does not console Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
The budget law -the most important of each year- has also given rise to talk in the Upper House. With the budgetary stability law that the PP approved in 2012, the Senate was granted veto power over the spending ceiling. But this scenario was later modified by the socialists. In any case, and even if the last word rests with Congress, procedures, and especially budgets, can become platforms for political debate and marking the Executive.
In the landscape of recent years, the debate that took place in the Senate for the approval and application of article 155 of the Constitution in Catalonia in relation to the process survives.
The Upper House is the one that has the power to approve or not the application of this article of autonomous suspension. But it must be at the request of the Government. The same happens with the power to dissolve town councils if they fail to comply with the Constitution, a process that also requires government initiative.
The framework of action of the Senate, even though it is a territorial chamber and of second reading, is broader than what is normally used. And it is evident that when there is a different political color in Congress, the camera is activated as a counterpower in all its sense.
The composition of the Senate is also important in the election of different representatives in fundamental organisms of the State. The Chamber elects 10 of the 20 members of the Judiciary, four of the 12 magistrates of the Constitutional Court, four members of the RTVE council, six of the 12 councilors of the Court of Accounts and, among other institutions, the Ombudsman Also in relation to Congress. The election must be by qualified majority.
The main function of the Senate is that of a chamber of territorial representation, and nothing has been said about it during this campaign. The post-procés scenario has parked the debate on both the State model and the pending reform of the Chamber. Full decentralization, cooperation between autonomies, the eventual design of a new financing model are parked issues that are the responsibility of the Senate. The eternally pending reform, already sufficiently debated and agreed but always in the drawer, advocates, among many other issues, for being the first reading chamber on issues that concern autonomies.
The new table of the Senate would be constituted on August 17, when a new president must be elected since at the moment it is the socialist Ander Gil who holds the position. A presidency that takes on more relevance when the political color is different.
