"The decision has been made," they say in Moncloa. And, in the case of Pedro Sánchez, that means there is no going back.
"The law must be reformed and prevent this from happening again," they insist, according to the order issued by the Prime Minister, which resulted in the registration last Monday in Congress of the PSOE bill to try to avoid the perverse consequences of the application of the organic law of Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom – known as the law of only yes is yes –, which since its entry into force has benefited more than 400 sexual offenders with reductions in their sentences. Last Friday, the Socialists already requested the processing of this reform through the urgent procedure to shorten deadlines. "There is no time to lose, we must end this now," they defend.
The intense negotiations opened in recent weeks between the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, and the head of Justice, Pilar Llop, had been "entrenched". They reached an impasse. And Sánchez chose last Sunday not to wait any longer for United We Can and present the parliamentary initiative of the PSOE alone, based on the latest proposal that Llop put on the table. "We cannot wait any longer," argued the Socialists.
The ministers of Podemos, Irene Montero and Ione Belarra, made public their total disagreement with the "unilateral" initiative of the PSOE, which they accused of succumbing to pressure from the right. "The Socialists do not give in to any pressure," replied the PSOE spokesman in Congress, Patxi López. And the socialist Pilar Llop abandoned her usual discretion to undertake a Numantine defense of her reform to "correct as soon as possible" a rule, promoted by Equality, to which Justice attributed "little technical solvency." The collision between the PSOE and Unidas Podemos is one of the most serious suffered in the government coalition in a legislature that is already facing its final stretch, in the middle of an election year.
Sánchez thus now faces a major double challenge. On the one hand, to be able to approve the socialist reform despite the disagreement with Unidas Podemos and the misgivings of some members of the legislature, such as ERC. Without excluding the PP. "Yes or yes, we are going to correct this law," Patxi López reaffirmed yesterday, given the social alarm generated by the cascade of reductions in sentences for sexual offenders.
But the President of the Government intends, at the same time, to preserve the coalition between the PSOE and United We Can. Sánchez emphatically rejected last Friday any risk of rupture. "It is not contemplated, on the contrary, the progressive coalition government continues," he settled. And in the Moncloa they assure that they are already trying to redirect the bitter clash with the purple formation. "That is our intention," they say.
To begin with, with a change of interlocutors. “Now new actors are beginning to work in the process. Until now they were the two ministries, Equality and Justice, and now they are the parliamentary groups ”, they highlight in Moncloa. Therefore, the ministers Félix Bolaños and María Jesús Montero, also deputy secretary general of the PSOE, in addition to Patxi López, are now at the forefront of the political negotiation.
To try to redirect this internal crisis, Sánchez has already begun to put the achievements of the coalition government in this legislature in front of its internal discrepancies in his political and electoral discourse, according to his advisers. In Moncloa and the PSOE leadership they list the almost 200 legislative initiatives already approved, with three consecutive general State budgets, the rise in the minimum wage, the increase in pensions according to the CPI, the labor reform, the free public transport and the rest of the measures of the social shield deployed to deal with the inflationary crisis... "These are the issues that are leaving a trace because they benefit citizens in their day-to-day lives," argue the Socialists. They assume that the clashes between the PSOE and Unidas Podemos generate many alarming headlines, wear down the government and demobilize the progressive electorate, but they allege that they pass as quickly as they arrive. And they trust that, in the end, the citizens will also put the economic and social achievements of the Government, and the advances in rights, before their specific internal discrepancies.
The law of only yes is yes, they admit in the PSOE, is "an exception" due to its disastrous consequences and the enormous social alarm generated. In serious previous discrepancies with United We Can, as happened with the trans law or the recent animal protection regulations, they assure that there were only two alternatives: "Either there is an agreement, or there is no law." And if in the trans law the theses of the purple formation were imposed, in that of animal welfare those of the socialists did.
With that of sexual freedom, they settle in Moncloa, there is no option: "We are determined to solve the problem generated in the application of the law."
