Junts and Podemos needed to bite the Government. The sooner the better. Show them that negotiating with them is a risky sport. Neither blackmail, nor carrots, Carles Puigdemont had written on social networks. But what was supposed to be the first major attack on the PSOE finally turned into a daring performance. A hickey that leaves a mark, yes, because it breaks some capillaries. Miriam Nogueras wonderfully choreographed the drama that the day required. Continued tightening of the screws on Pedro Sánchez to end up sparing his life at the last minute with the seven Junts deputies erasing themselves from the map and not participating in the vote. Yes but no, no but yes. From the loot that the junteros say they have obtained from the negotiation taken to the limit, we will have to wait to determine exactly how much is precious stones and how much is jewelry.
The one who did draw blood was Podemos. If it was already difficult for Pedro Sánchez to assemble the podemitas when they sat in the Executive, unchained as they are now it is much more complicated. The purple ones, expelled from the Council of Ministers by the PSOE-Sumar binomial, returned a first blow yesterday. To them must be attributed the first serious defeat of the Government, overturning one of the three decrees that had to be validated. And insisting, in case anyone missed it, that it was the one whose authorship corresponded to Yolanda Díaz. It is her who they wanted to point out as a cutter of rights for a get away from me over there about unemployment benefits. Neither forgetting nor forgiveness on the left of the left.
Sánchez and his main Sherpa, Félix Bolaños, made a mistake from the beginning. To think that Junts and Podemos can have their backs bent with textbook arguments – they will not dare to vote no along with the PP and Vox, the non-validation of the decrees will harm the most disadvantaged – means that the socialists still need a time to get to know more and better those who decided to take the round bed of the investiture.
Although the Government has managed to validate two of the three royal decrees, junteros and podemitas have painted the canvas of the legislature with a brushstroke. The first threatening until the end, the second carrying out their threat: the Government is weak. And any attempt to simulate strength will deserve a timely reminder. The word that will best define this legislature will be unpredictability. This has been certified with the surreal day in the Senate – Congress is under construction –, including the collapse of the electronic voting system.
It is a lesson that socialists will have to learn. After the 23-J elections, Sánchez faced the children’s game in the adult version of scare or death. He chose, who wouldn’t?, to keep breathing and gladly sign the mortgage of the shocks. Well, the scares are already here. “Governing like this is very difficult,” Yolanda Díaz whimpered. Did you really imagine it otherwise with the current configuration of Congress?
The Executive is touched. The opposition scores a victory, although only one of the three decrees has been volatilized. The mantra of popular and voxeros about the ineffectiveness of an Executive with such unstable foundations at the mercy of the continued and growing demands of the investiture partners is reinforced.
Although what has happened these days, the most touching thing has been hearing the PSOE ask the PP to come to its aid to take the chestnuts out of the fire. Not even in his wildest dreams did Alberto Núñez Feijóo imagine that he would be able to fulfill so soon the prophecy that he gave to Sánchez in the investiture debate: his partners will betray him. When that happens don’t come looking for me.
And the most strange thing, which there has also been, is that Junts intended to demand as a negotiation condition that the Government accept sanctions on the companies that left Catalonia in 2017 if they do not now return voluntarily. There are solvent people in this party who not only know the laws, but also know how the basic principles of economic and business activity work. So this nonsense was perfectly avoidable.
