The Government faces with "good prospects", according to what they assure in Moncloa, a new negotiation with Esquerra in search of the decisive support of its 13 deputies to the general budgets of the State of 2023. "We are optimistic", admits a socialist minister, very aware , however, of the serious turbulence that the Government is going through.
Despite the initial warnings expressed by the Republican spokesman in Congress, Gabriel Rufián – “the ERC vote is sweating”, he warned in a very graphic way – in Moncloa they highlight the willingness to negotiate expressed by Oriol Junqueras. And they consider that it would be “an exercise in good sense, on the part of a left-wing formation”, to support some accounts that assure that they are “the most social in history” and that they will trigger, as Pedro Sánchez reiterated yesterday, spending on social policies, education, scholarships or in the dependency system. In addition to the investment itself in Catalonia, in a context of serious inflationary spiral.
In the Executive they assume that they do not have a crystal ball to be able to predict what will happen with the coalition government between ERC and Junts. They do claim to be aware of the "strong pressure" that Jordi Turull would be receiving to resist a decision by the Junts militancy, who presume that he will bet on the breakup. Despite the turmoil in the Government, they see Pere Aragonès as "very willing" to keep his mandate afloat, even if it is alone and even if it is only "for a while". A scenario that in any case they believe would not jeopardize possible ERC support for the new State accounts, as happened in the 2021 and 2022 budgets.
“They have decided that from minute zero,” warns a minister, however, who highlights the exercise of “pragmatism” that he attributes to Esquerra, and his renunciation of the unilateral path that was reflected –“black on white”– in the resolution of the last meeting of the dialogue table between both governments, last July.
An appointment that also certified the mutual commitment to dejudicialize the political conflict in Catalonia. In Moncloa they claim to keep the door open to reactivate the reform of the crime of sedition, to reduce their sentences, as long as there is a parliamentary majority to endorse it. But some members of the Government continue to question the ERC's willingness to assume that "sedition continues to be a crime", since Sánchez only contemplates lowering a criminal type that, in one way or another, they warn that it is included in the majority of European legal systems, and not its elimination.
The first acid test of the new state budgets will be the full debate that will be held in Congress next month. But in Moncloa they do not contemplate that the ERC is willing to knock down the processing of the accounts, as it did in February 2019, seeing no progress in the dialogue on the resolution of the political conflict, which forced Sánchez to liquidate the legislature and precipitate the general elections. On this occasion, they think that "common sense" will prevail, as it happened in the two previous years, and the budget project will once again gather a large absolute majority of the investiture bloc.
A new ERC support would be a "coherent position", as they point out, to support a progressive government in Spain. In the Executive they assume that the Republican formation will want to sell their possible support dearly, as the rest of the groups in the investiture bloc will try to do, but they also highlight the "disposition" of these parties to negotiation and agreement. Because everyone knows what the alternative is.
