In this new legislature, Pedro Sánchez will not have a spare vote to take any step he intends to take. Which will force him to negotiate and agree, inside and outside the Government, on each movement.
This was recognized by Sánchez yesterday, during the appearance he held at the Moncloa to take stock of the year and present his perspectives for the new year, after the Council of Ministers approved, after intense negotiations, the new omnibus decree on anti-crisis measures. “This is a government that, both by conviction and necessity, is obliged to speak with all parliamentary groups,” Sánchez admitted.
“It has been very random,” he confessed. But he trusted that Congress will validate the new decree, since he assured that it includes “to a large extent” the demands raised by the parliamentary majority that supports the legislature.
Sánchez claimed his ability to negotiate and agree, despite his parliamentary minority. And he warned that he is “committed to dialogue, as required and demanded by the political plurality and territorial diversity of Spain.”
The Government, he assured, “will continue to make the agreement its reason for being, we will do what we have done these last five years, which is to dialogue with everyone, negotiate until exhaustion and agree with all the political formations that want to agree.”
But the difficulty of the endeavor is clearly illustrated by the fact that Junts per Catalunya, whose seven deputies are essential, already threatened yesterday to vote against some “Macedonian” decrees, which in their opinion regulate “unrelated” matters that make political positioning difficult when voted on. set.
The president, however, insisted on his ability to reach an agreement, also with the Catalan independence movement, “to normalize the political situation inherited from the previous administration, in a very important territory of our country, such as Catalonia.”
But, asked about the end-of-year speech that Pere Aragonès gave the day before, in which he placed 2024 as the year in which the negotiation of a self-determination referendum will begin, Sánchez replied: “We know the proposals of the independence movement, Nothing new under the sun”.
Instead, he insisted on the need to “open a new phase of dialogue, of normalization of the political situation in Catalonia.” And this phase, in his opinion, goes through “the measures we are taking, at the level of legislative power, with the amnesty law”, in addition to “finding a meeting point between those maximalist proposals of the independence movement, which is to hold a referendum of self-determination, which the Government does not share or accept.”
And also a new regional financing system, which has been waiting to be updated for ten years. On this issue, Sánchez assured that “we will talk with Catalonia and with each and every one of the autonomous communities of our country.”
Sánchez showed his determination, in this new legislature, to “consolidate the progress achieved.” The coalition government between the PSOE and Sumar, he assured, “will never abdicate its main task, which is to improve and protect the lives of the majority of citizens with courageous measures, when and where necessary.”
The president also vindicated his economic management – ??“we are on the right path” –, with growth and job creation figures that he assured refute “all the prophets of chaos” and all the “catastrophic prophecies” of the right. Some figures that, in his opinion, demonstrate “the consistency” of his Executive. “A clean Government, without a trace of corruption,” he highlighted.
And he announced that tomorrow, after returning from the trip to Iraq that he undertook yesterday, he will make a “government crisis”, as he called it, to replace his first vice president and Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, who will now assume the presidency of the European Bank of Investments (EIB).
Sánchez was “delighted” to have managed to reach an agreement even with the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to reopen the negotiation to renew the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), now with the intermediation of the European Commission. But he denounced the “asymmetric polarization” that in his opinion the public debate in Spain suffers from, and that he attributed to the right.
“There are people here who insult, and people who are insulted. Political parties that are besieged, and political leaders who urge the siege,” she criticized. The logic of the PP and Vox, she warned, is to “demobilize” the electorate and generate “disaffection” of citizens towards politics. “The political project of the right and the extreme right is anger, insult and frustration over electoral objectives that were not met,” she added. “The level of disqualifications and insults that the opposition has reached is not acceptable,” she warned.
And he singled it out in the insult that Isabel Díaz Ayuso directed at him, from the Congress’s own guest gallery: “It is absolutely despicable,” he condemned.
