Bad faces and a bad atmosphere to close the strenuous plenary session of the Congress of Deputies this Thursday, which has been a stress test for the coalition government and for the legislature. And the result is a scraped pass, one of those that a good-natured professor gave to someone who achieved a meager 4.5 out of 10. Consequently, the immediate political course is plunged into darkness. For the first time, a law from the Council of Ministers is approved without the vote of United We Can. A frowning abstention added to an accusation of treason against the Socialists, who negotiated behind his back so that the PP gave way to the norm with his abstention. all ugly
That thunderous abstention of United We Can reveals that the atmosphere between the PSOE and its partner is going through its worst moment. And with the external allies of the Executive, the progressive and multinational groups that have been keeping the mandate alive and that have no incentives to bring down the Government, things are even worse. Yesterday, the Basque and Catalan groups debated between disbelief and anger at the attitude of the Socialists. The absence of new explanations or even the possibility of a reliable investigation that clarifies the Pegasus scandal and the last-minute haggle in the audiovisual law, to the benefit of the large television conglomerates and to the detriment of the small and medium-sized producers, concocted by the PSOE with PP and Ciudadanos behind the rest, have poisoned the mood of the majority bloc. And it is not a minor detail that the pact in the audiovisual law had been the ERC condition to support the 2022 budgets. Yesterday, Esquerra voted against.
This balance of damage is paradoxical, because yesterday, aside from the difficult appearance of President Pedro Sánchez due to the espionage scandal, the session seemed destined to be one of the most fruitful and politically successful for the coalition government in terms of legislative production : The Sexual Freedom Law was approved, promoted by Minister Irene Montero –received with an emotional applause in the courtyard of Congress by the entire team of her ministry and members of the feminist movements–, the law against LGTBI Discrimination, promoted by the socialist parliamentary group –which christened it the “Zerolo law”, but which will eventually go down in history as the “anti-Gypsyism law”– and the audiovisual law, which with many difficulties had achieved a unique treatment for co-official languages, such as Government and ERC had agreed.
But everything went wrong. Minus the votes. All three laws were passed.
But, on the one hand, the progressive and multinational groups that have been supporting the Government since the beginning of the legislature, including the confederal group of United We Can, were clearly disappointed by the total lack of novelty in Sánchez's intervention on the case. Pegasus. The promise of legislative reforms was not accompanied by any clarification about what happened, about the political motives of the espionage to parliamentary partners or about the lack of protection for political positions and, singularly, spied on deputies. Ferran Bel, from the PDECat -one of those spied on-, expressed his deep disappointment from the platform, and Aitor Esteban, spokesman for the PNV, summed up the Government's attitude reproaching that it does not seem to have any intention of undertaking the profound reforms that the State needs to stop his turn to authoritarianism and expressly mentioned the obvious problem in the State security forces and bodies and the judicial leadership. And that was the tenor of all the allies, from the ERC to the CUP, through Junts, Compromís, Bildu or Más País: “It says that the deep state does not exist, but it suffers from it,” Esteban told Sánchez. But neither the PSOE nor the president seemed to be moved: there will be no investigation commission or declassification of papers.
To further cloud the atmosphere, yesterday it became clear that the relations between Esquerra and the commons walk on a wire. Jaume Asens reproached Gabriel Rufián from the rostrum for the attack launched by Enrest Maragall against the mayor Ada Colau regarding the Pegasus case, and the ERC spokesman closed his speech with a cryptic and malevolent insinuation against the president of the confederal group and leader of the common in Congress: "Don't go to Waterloo so much." Waterloo reacted, of course. Carles Puigdemont wrote: “Going to Waterloo to do politics or make personal visits only bothered those who want to isolate and imprison us. I see that now it also bothers Esquerra. I'm sorry. Above all because if the alternative is to go to Madrid so much, we already see the results”. The thing did not go beyond that, but the tension between Asens and Rufián was very visible, while the Socialists left ERC with hardly any cards to defend the stability of the Executive. Neither table, nor audiovisual law nor explanations about espionage.
The coalition legislature resembles the career of a clumsy goalscorer: he always scores, but he doesn't get a goal that doesn't look like an accident. It is impossible to see a clean shot that describes a slight curve against the sky and ends up in the net. And in exchange we attend a recital of semi-failures and stumbles. Julio Salinas must feel vindicated, but the stands are impatient.
