Pedro Sánchez met at the Davos summit last January with the main heavyweights of the Ibex 35 and later, as soon as he arrived in Madrid, he took a photograph with a group of retirees playing petanque. It is what marketing has, and Sánchez is today a product that is in the showcase in an intense electoral year. The Prime Minister believes it necessary to recover the left vein that he had hidden inside him since he won the famous primaries of his party, which allowed him to access the leadership of the PSOE. The best proof of this new mood is his speech against the powerful – “we are an uncomfortable government for some economic sectors” – and the special taxes that he has applied to banks and energy companies.
The affected sectors have already announced that they are going to defend themselves in the courts of justice for what they consider discrimination with respect to other economic sectors that also earn money but have been able to avoid having to pay these taxes. They are partly right. The problem is how they can build their speech against the fixing of these taxes when in the last hours their stratospheric benefits have been known. The large Spanish banks have achieved a total of 20,580 million profits this year. So clear.
It is true that a good part of these millions go to social work and also that when the banks are doing well, this is a sign that the country’s real economy is also doing well. We are not going to be saddened because the numbers smile at our banks and our large companies. Quite the opposite. If they are strong, they can act as a locomotive for the rest of the country’s companies. But there is no doubt that the numbers are so spectacular that they will make it difficult for them to tell the story. The vice president of the Government Nadia Calviño was quick yesterday to declare that these figures “confirm the appropriateness of having imposed an extraordinary tax.” And she added: “It is a general clamor that they have to pitch in.” We will see what ends up dictating justice.
