Abrupt change of script and calendars, without a day of respite, much less tranquility in the Moncloa. Pedro Sánchez's immediate reaction, practically inevitable in the face of the early elections in Catalonia announced by Pere Aragonès, was the renunciation of trying to approve new general budgets of the State for this same 2024, as was his intention, as confirmed by government sources to La Vanguardia.
In the midst of the electoral struggle already unleashed between the PSC, ERC and Junts before the appointment with the polls on May 12, the margin to obtain the essential support of the pro-independence formations for new public accounts in Spain was reduced to zero. So the President of the Government ordered to open a parenthesis, with the goal of preparing the budgets for the year 2025. The accounts now in force are those for 2023, which were already automatically extended on January 1, and will continue throughout the year. 2024.
When Pedro Sánchez could finally see the horizon of his hectic new mandate being minimally clear, the Government assumed this Wednesday that the scenario of the legislature is becoming complicated again, with high doses of uncertainty, after Aragonès failed to seal an agreement with the commons to unclog the Catalan budgets and announce the electoral advance.
After the pact sealed last week between the PSOE, Junts and ERC that managed to unblock the Amnesty law – and that this Thursday is precisely being voted on in the plenary session of Congress – the Government saw the door ajar to be able to approve new general budgets of the State for this same year, the first of Sánchez's current mandate, which would provide greater political and economic stability for the course of the legislature. The calendar that they managed in Moncloa until this Wednesday contemplated the final approval of the Amnesty law in the second half of next May, and the green light for the new public accounts of the State already in June.
But the early Catalan elections disrupt the Government's plans and calendars. “Without a doubt this can alter the political board,” acknowledged, in a first reaction to Aragonès' decision, the first vice president of the Executive, and deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero.
As Minister of Finance, Montero had also already begun to “fight” with the parliamentary groups, with the intention of accelerating the presentation of the new public accounts for 2024. Approval by the Council of Ministers was already imminent, according to her own calculations. of Moncloa.
But the Catalan electoral advance “is moving the political board again,” as Montero admitted. And the plan, now, is to forget about the budgets for 2024, but at the same time try to take advantage of all the work advanced so far to begin preparing a draft of accounts for the year 2025. Sánchez in no case gives up on keeping his mandate afloat .
Aside from the reversal in the budgets, this year's intense electoral calendar, which now completes the appointment with the polls in Catalonia, will make all the legislative action planned by the Government extremely difficult. After the elections in Galicia on February 18, next April 21 is the appointment with the polls in the Basque Country, then on May 12 the Catalan elections and, finally, on June 9 are the European elections.
At the electoral level, at least, the PSOE hopes to make up for the setback suffered in Galicia, since they emphasize that the Popular Party is “irrelevant” in both Euskadi and Catalonia. The intention is that Salvador Illa, at the head of the PSC, not only wins the elections again, but this time he becomes the president of the Generalitat. “We came to this electoral event very strong,” Montero said this Wednesday.
The coincidence is that Sánchez himself had already planned to travel to Barcelona this coming Sunday, to support Salvador Illa at the PSC congress. The leader of the PSOE is once again campaigning.
