The precedents and the context did not invite optimism, even though both Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo have repeatedly agreed on the urgent need to reform article 49 of the Constitution, to replace the term "disabled" with that of "persons with disabilities". ”, whose project was even approved by the Council of Ministers in May 2021. But the final breakdown of the negotiations between the Government and the Popular Party in its last attempt to agree on the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary last October, and the electoral confrontation already triggered before the appointment with the municipal and regional polls on May 28, did not augur that both parties could explore any minimum agreement. However, the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, and the PP spokesperson in Congress, Cuca Gamarra, despite mutual misgivings, show their willingness to promote this constitutional reform.
If achieved, it would be the first in 12 years, since José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Mariano Rajoy agreed in August 2011 to introduce the principle of budgetary stability in the Magna Carta, to try to stop the serious financial crisis that was threatening Spain at that time. .
Bolaños and Gamarra met this Wednesday in Congress to reopen negotiations on article 49 of the Constitution. In principle, with good prospects. It has been a "cordial and constructive meeting", in the opinion of the Minister of the Presidency, in which both parties have agreed on their "desire to build", despite the usual political confrontation, now even more unleashed before the new electoral cycle. Bolaños has highlighted that "caring for the Constitution also means adapting it to the times, based on a very broad social and political consensus."
"The Government and the PP share the need to focus the reform on article 49," Bolaños pointed out, given the repeated warning from Feijóo's formation that it was not a matter of taking advantage of this review to contemplate other initiatives that their partners could claim government or parliamentarians, from Unidas Podemos to Esquerra. The minister has insisted that today he has agreed with the PP to "stick" the reform of the Constitution only to this article, without introducing other debates.
Bolaños, however, has assured that during the meeting he has also told Gamarra that "there is a point of the Constitution that is not being fulfilled", in reference to a renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary that remains blocked. The minister has insisted on denouncing this "constitutional and institutional anomaly, very difficult to explain." "We have an agreement closed to the last comma, which is in force on the part of the Government and the PSOE," he stressed. And he has summoned Feijóo to sign it now.
A reference to which, despite the agreement on the content of the reform, once again revealed the relationship between the Government and the main opposition party. And an allusion, said the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, that Minister Bolaños made "in passing" at the meeting, without becoming an element of the meeting, which is why it made the minister ugly for using the press conference to present the principle of agreement on the disappearance of the Constitution of the term diminished, to introduce this matter of dissent.
A reproach that he extended to the fact that Félix Bolaños saw in the PP's decision to face this constitutional reform a rectification of the popular, when Cuca Gamarra assured that already in the meeting that Alberto Núñez Feijóo held with Pedro Sánchez last April, nothing more access to the presidency of the PP, he already expressed his willingness to address this matter, and in July, the popular leader sent Pedro Sánchez a formulation for the reform, after meeting with CERMI (Spanish Committee of representatives of people with disabilities), with whom Minister Bolaño had a meeting a few days ago.
The reason that it is now possible to address this constitutional reform, explained the general secretary of the PP, is that the Government has promised, as requested by the popular ones, that the constitutional reform will be limited to the reform of article 49, and will not allow other groups take advantage of the occasion to introduce other elements of change in the Magna Carta. In addition, according to Gamarra, the Government has also accepted that the reform take into account the recommendations of the Council of State, in 2019, on this reform, which did not do the proposal that was presented at the time in Congress and to which the PP tabled a full amendment, precisely because it did not heed the report and the recommendations.
