The final stretch of the coalition government is tricky. But the path of agreements that PSOE and United We Can leave behind is a slap in the face of the regiment of doomsayers who, from the right and from the left, in 2019 and 2020 predicted a catastrophe of collisions, fights and inaction in Spain's first coalition government. Compliance with the government agreement has been as eventful as it has been productive. Three budgets in a timely manner –something the previous executive was incapable of– and a fruitful legislative production that is entering its final phase with the electoral calendar as the sword of Damocles and three essential laws as a stumbling block to finish the task. The repeal of the so-called gag law – Citizen Security Law, with which the former minister Jorge Fernández Díaz reacted to the mobilizations of 15-M and the procés –, the new Housing Law and the troubled trans law, are stuck in legislative procedures that confront the two partners regarding the ambition and scope of these regulations. And none of the three look good. Although the same has happened with almost each of the government agreements signed in 2020.
Until a few weeks ago, the one that seemed most on track was the repeal – or better to say, reform – of the Citizen Security Law, an ordinance law that has notably limited the rights of demonstration and assembly, as well as political activism, which It was the object of the rule. However, as Joaquín Vera reported in these pages on October 24, difficulties have arisen in repealing article 37.4, which regulates fines for alleged disrespect to law enforcement officials. The calculated ambiguity of the current wording gives the officials of the State security forces an interpretative power to fine citizens for reasons as strange as "looking badly" or "tutear". The discussion is whether to repeal it, due to the abuse that the agents are making of this article, or to modify its wording so that these disrespects are extremely specific and do not leave room for arbitrariness or abuse. The issue seems trivial, but the far-right Jusapol union has threatened to protest if this power is stolen. Another article that is being heavily debated is the one that establishes the presumption of veracity of police testimonies, which nullifies the weight of the graphic evidence of their actions. In other words, the article that produced the convictions of Isa Serra and Alberto Rodríguez. United We Can is obviously very belligerent on this point, but Interior, as in the previous case, is tempted before cutting the powers of the agents. There are more issues, such as the regulation of the use of rubber balls, on which there is still no agreement at the moment. In any case, it is not United We Can who is most tense on the rope, but the parliamentary partners, particularly EH-Bildu and ERC, and in several of these matters, such as the wording of article 37.4 or the elimination or restriction of the use of rubber balls, works to drag the PSOE to a meeting point.
On the other hand, in housing the bitterness is greater. Although there has been progress and many public pronouncements by both parties, since in 2018 the then deputy of the commons Lucia Martin -today, in the Barcelona City Council- and the then Minister of Transport, José Luis Ábalos, began this arduous discussion, the main disagreement is the same. The PSOE does not want to give communities and city councils forceful tools to intervene in prices, while in United We Can they are increasingly convinced that regulation has to be robust, especially since a sanction from the National Commission of Markets and Competition to Idealista trigger suspicions that prices are agreed from the offer, including that of individuals who go to real estate agencies or online services: thanks to technological tools there has been a cartelization of the offer that prevents competition and the setting of prices in the market. The initiative of United We Can that Sareb's assets be used to alleviate the shortage of public housing – promoted by the Valencian Vice President Héctor Illueca, who has gathered support in other communities, and which is opposed by the Vice President Nadia Calviño – and the compliance with the dictates of the United Nations in the field of evictions do not point to an easy agreement either.
And the third – and completely unexpected, given the cost it is having for the PSOE among its own – is the trans law. The Socialists have introduced in the amendments debates that in the Government had already been closed between the vice president, then, Carmen Calvo, and the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero. With the addition that, among the socialists, since Calvo left the Government, it is not clear who is leading this issue, so that United We Can have a hard time finding the functional interlocutor. And they go from the Cortes window to the Ferraz window asking who to talk to. Kafka wrote a lot and well about this type of incident.
