This text belongs to 'Político', the newsletter that Lola García sends every Thursday to the readers of La Vanguardia. If you want to receive it in your mailbox, sign up here.
While Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo were beating each other up in Congress, immersed in the heat of an implacable dispute that goes beyond politics to delve into the personal, in Catalonia the dice were thrown and the board turned.
The commons carried out their warning and refused to support Pere Aragonès' budget because the president does not renounce the Hard Rock, a leisure tourism project in Tarragona that includes casinos, anathema to those of Jessica Albiach, but one of the conditions of the PSC to provide necessary support to the accounts. ERC failed to square the puzzle and the fall in budgets leads to a call for elections in Catalonia on May 12. Suddenly, everything is turned upside down.
Once the amnesty pact was closed, Sánchez hoped to approve the State budget as soon as possible with the support of ERC and Junts. The undertaking was difficult due to the competition between the independentists, but they had shown a willingness to reach an agreement that would have given the progressive Government air for a couple of years in office. But with the Catalan electoral call on the horizon, it was impossible for ERC and Junts to give their support to Sánchez. So the President of the Government has decided to extend the current ones and work directly for those of 2025, which, by the way, will be more austere, since the fiscal rules imposed by the EU will begin to govern. Skipping those of 2024 and going directly to those of 2025, some collaborators already advised Sánchez, but the leader of the PSOE wanted to maintain the line of the previous legislature: the Government approves the budgets in a timely manner and that is a sign of stability no matter how much noise the opposition causes. That mantra just broke.
The electoral advance in Catalonia has been relatively unexpected, especially in Madrid. Aragonès insisted on exhausting the legislature in February 2025. He even managed to silence the voices in his party that advised progress to save a summer that could be complicated by water restrictions due to drought or the possibility of fires. Also to catch Junts with the changed step, since they were still waiting to elect a candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat. Until a week ago, Aragonès believed it was possible to continue, despite his slim parliamentary majority. Last Sunday he already saw that it was not.
Junts hoped to challenge ERC for pro-independence primacy in the European elections led by Carles Puigdemont and, riding that wave, give them the blow in the Catalan elections. The former president had kept it unknown about repeating as a candidate for the Generalitat when it seemed possible that he would be amnestied before the polls were placed. The advance makes it unfeasible for this rule to be in force on May 12, but at this point it is also quite evident that the judicial proceedings will mean that its application in the Puigdemont case will not be a reality for at least a year. Even so, Junts will place his main reference as a candidate, knowing that he would not be able to take office as president if the polls gave him the opportunity because he will not be able to set foot in Catalonia.
It's a movie we've already seen. Puigdemont was a candidate in December 2017. He played with the ambiguity and conveyed the idea that he could be sworn in from a distance and thus challenge the Spanish State. He came second, behind Inés Arrimadas, but ahead of ERC. But the Republicans did not allow him to be inaugurated remotely, something that the Junts leader has never forgiven the Republicans for. Then, he symbolically returned to the lists in 2021 and came third.
Since you have not been tried or convicted, you may be eligible. It remains up in the air whether he could take possession of his seat remotely as did Lluís Puig, who votes electronically from Brussels, and also whether when he is amnestied he would recover all of his prerogatives as a deputy. But that is advancing events. The second or third on the list will be the real candidate.
In recent days, ERC tried to get Moncloa to help unblock the Catalan budgets with its influence on Salvador Illa and Yolanda Díaz. It was a blind path from the beginning. The commons have agreed on autonomy with respect to Sumar in Catalonia (they signed it in writing a few weeks ago) and Díaz does not harbor much sympathy for an ERC that rejected her labor reform. The leader of Sumar also supports the position of the commons against Hard Rock. For those of Jessica Albiach, this project has become the symbol of the country model to fight and they believe that it is not bad for them to stand up to an election.
In the case of Illa, Sánchez could not ask him to back out of his agreement on that tourist complex just when the PSC leader is staking his electoral victory. That Illa wins the elections and, above all, that he obtains the presidency is the balm that Sánchez entrusts himself to to justify in Spain his commitment to the amnesty law. So weakening his position by forcing him to back away from his demands on the Hard Rock was not good business. Sánchez and Illa's personal and political relationship was forged during the pandemic in a very special way. The Catalan is grateful to the president for his treatment during those difficult months and the PSC can now breathe oxygen into the President of the Government at a difficult time. If Illa has induced the electoral advance in Catalonia with his bet on Hard Rock, Sánchez is betting everything on the Illa card.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso enjoys enviable political intuition. She does not intend to enhance her language when she expresses herself in public. Quite the opposite. She talks like people on the street. And so she understands everyone. Yesterday she explained that she lives with her boyfriend in his house, which is mortgaged, the word that marks ordinary lives in this country. That it didn't cost a million (he didn't say how much), that he didn't pay with “currency notes” (I confess that I stayed in the briefcases from another time) and that everything is “in A” (what about A and B is like what about “with VAT or without VAT” but wholesale). The Madrid president also described her brother as “commercial.” “A commercial like there are so many in this country” (I admit that I always assimilated the commercials to the employees of the Círculo de Lectores who went with their briefcase from house to house). Ayuso looks hurt. There is no direct evidence against her, but sometimes it is harder to deal with the outrages committed by those close to her.
Indeed, the president of the Community of Madrid is only tangentially accused. The question - for now - is whether she knew that her partner was defrauding the Treasury at levels high enough for it to be considered a possible crime. At the moment, it has not been proven that he took advantage of her position for her business, but there is a firm accusation of having defrauded the Treasury of more than 300,000 euros after a - legal - blow in a purchase and sale of masks. But Ayuso considers everything a hunt for him. His brother was also accused of enriching himself from another mask contract, although the case was filed. That episode was not highlighted by the PSOE, but used by Pablo Casado against him and the president did not hesitate to take revenge, which ended the political career of the PP leader.
The problem with corruption issues is that there is no way to contain the stain. As soon as it catches on a tissue, the liquid of suspicion spreads uncontrollably. Ayuso's problem in this case is precisely the question that Alberto Núñez Feijóo insistently asked Pedro Sánchez in the Senate about the Koldo case two weeks ago: “You knew it and you hid it.” He repeated it over and over. Now the socialists assume that Ayuso also knew it and hid it. The mechanism of corruption accusations is the ancient tit for tat…
The PSOE now takes solace in the fiscal problems of Ayuso's boyfriend, but before that the PP crossed some red lines, since it was not content with fully exploiting the Koldo case, despite the fact that there was enough material to call into question the honorability of a former minister and former secretary of organization of the PSOE such as José Luis Ábalos. The rapid firewall installed by Sánchez made the PP try to collect other pieces such as the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, or the leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, without having enough ammunition. Hence he did not achieve his objective. The popular ones then entered more swampy terrain, targeting the president's wife, Begoña Gómez, for having held professional meetings with senior officials from Air Europa, a company rescued by the Government.
If the PP perceived the Koldo case as the weak point of Sánchez, who arrived at Moncloa with a motion of censure justified in the corruption of the popular ones, the socialists now see the matter of Ayuso's boyfriend as the opportunity to turn the situation around. marker. What's more, the socialists are convinced that the last thing they are going to do is turn the other cheek. The
Óscar Puente's entry into the Government was premonitory of the style with which Sánchez intended to combat Feijóo. But the president himself entered fully into the battle yesterday, remembering the friendship of the PP leader with a drug trafficker. In Moncloa they consider that the Koldo case embarrasses them, but that they have responded forcefully by removing Ábalos and now they have a former secretary of organization in the Mixed group of Congress, while the PP refuses to assume responsibilities.
As it is, climbing is guaranteed. Between now and the European elections, the fire will increase at will, whether it hits the target or produces collateral victims. That moment is about to arrive when populism begins to salivate. “Clean Portugal” is the motto with which Chega's far-right has boosted its votes and has become the third force. It is foreseeable to see who can rub their hands if the PP and the PSOE continue down the same path and the Spaniards come to the conclusion that this is a country of commission agents. Sorry, commercials.
