“Pedro el breu” was ironically nicknamed by his internal rivals in the PSOE, and corroborated with conviction by his political adversaries in the Popular Party. But Pedro Sánchez remembers these days that it has been almost ten years since he won the leadership of his party. And for almost six years now, he has also been the president of the Spanish Government.
After now completing the first hundred days of his new mandate, the alleged corruption scandal of the Koldo case is once again fueling the desire of the right to try to bring down Sánchez. But the agreement sealed on Wednesday to put the Amnesty law on the defendants of the process, in which Junts per Catalunya’s support was based in its last investiture, once again charges the batteries to face this complex legislature.
In Moncloa they celebrate that, with the amnesty pact between the PSOE, Junts and Esquerra, Sánchez’s new mandate is given “more depth”. And despite the fact that the political storm is not abating, the president is already setting the course for his next battle: the approval of new general State budgets for this same year. Convinced, moreover, that he will also take them forward.
“There is a Government for a while”, Sánchez himself assured yesterday, after the day before the Justice Committee of Congress derailed the processing of the Amnesty law. “We will do many things during these next four years, in the field of coexistence, employment and social rights. We will devote ourselves to this”, stressed the head of the Executive, in a joint appearance with Chilean President Gabriel Boric, at the Palau de la Moneda in Santiago de Chile, on the last leg of his South American tour.
“It will be four years of the progressive coalition Government, in spite of everything”, warned Sánchez. “It will take a long time, I understand, for the opposition. But that’s what democracy is”, he replied to the PP’s tireless offensive to try to evict him.
The Spanish president defended the latest changes accepted in the Amnesty law, which derailed the agreement with Junts. “The opinion of the Venice Commission pointed out to us some improvements that the proposed law needs, and that is what we have done”, he alleged, with reference to the alleged crime of terrorism that now also weighs on Carles Puigdemont. But he insisted that this initiative “entered constitutional and will leave constitutional and in accordance with European law”, from the Courts.
Sánchez, in any case, regretted the hard offensive of the PP against this law. “We will see what we have always seen in Spain, we will see how the Spanish political right always fails in the big meetings”, he warned. Because the amnesty, he said, “is a great appointment for reconciliation and harmony between Spaniards”. “There is no more noble goal for a government to contribute to reconciliation, harmony and coexistence”, he defended.
After the amnesty agreement, Sánchez will now focus his efforts on getting new public accounts published for the current year, which would be the first of his new mandate, and would strengthen political stability and economy of the legislature. Experience, as he usually boasts, already has his Minister of Finance, Vice President María Jesús Montero, after managing to approve three consecutive budgets in the previous legislature.
“The objective of the Spanish Government is clear, we want to approve the general budgets of the State in 2024, and we also want to approve those of 2025, and we aspire to approve those of 2026”, highlighted Sánchez yesterday. As he usually predicts, the next general elections will not be held until 2027, despite the right-wing persevering in its strategy of systematic harassment.
The amnesty agreement cleared the way for the central government for the new budgets, although in this negotiation nothing is guaranteed in advance, and no group gave it a blank check. And much less together.
“We will talk with all the parliamentary forces to move forward as soon as possible with the general budgets of the State”, said Sánchez, who did not want to commit dates. “As soon as possible, I hope that we can immediately present the budget project to the Council of Ministers and send it to the General Courts”, he pointed out. In Moncloa they point out that it won’t be Tuesday, but they take it for granted that it won’t be delayed.
After the amnesty agreement, Sánchez is also now focusing his attention on the upcoming electoral calendar. The leader of the PSOE will star in his first campaign event in Bilbao today, on the occasion of the elections in Euskadi on April 21.
Despite the setback suffered in the recent Galician elections and with the intention of neutralizing the image of electoral decline, Sánchez will accompany the candidate of the Basque Socialists, Eneko Andueza. And he will do it with former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to commemorate, at the same time, the 20 years since his first electoral victory and his arrival in Moncloa.
