The government is not at risk. The PSOE and Unidas Podemos for Congress repeated it this Wednesday, in groups and before the microphones, to appease the fire that they themselves have sponsored and left to burn for weeks and that on Tuesday took the form of a session in which the spokespersons –Andrea Fernández for the PSOE and Lucía Muñoz for Unidas Podemos– they spent a reciprocal hardness without reaching the point of ridicule. This Wednesday, the appointment in the afternoon, the street call for feminism, was too important to pour more gasoline, so, without rectifying positions, everyone relaxed the lexicon.
The Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, who on Tuesday lived with disciplined stoicism the parliamentary session in which socialists and popular voted together for the reform of their Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom law, had a more calm exchange than usual with a deputy from Vox–in this case, Rocío de Meer, who avoided giving Montero another ordeal station, as Carla Toscano did in December, losing her manners and papers–, and took advantage of the corridor of Congress to dampen the tension in front of the press: “No the coalition government is at stake, the rights of women are at stake”, a concise but efficient way of tempering spirits without backing down. And the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, who on Tuesday went to support Montero and vote against taking the socialist reform into consideration, repeated what she has been saying: responsibility and negotiating spirit are needed.
In the streets, the feminist tide does not abate despite four years of elbowing in the coalition, but discontent is reflected institutionally: in 2022, Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz attended the solemn act of 8-M in Equality. This Wednesday the act was low profile and only Minister Irene Montero was there. The one for Social Rights, Ione Belarra, at that time was in the Senate, since the Animal Protection law was being voted on.
Now, the question is what to do in commission. ERC, Bildu, Más País, BNG and Compromís are waiting for some initiative from the confederate group, but they do not rule out presenting their amendments. In United We Can there are different sensitivities, although what the ministry says will be done. To mitigate the damage, some are in favor of turning the Equality proposals into amendments and agreeing on them with the investiture bloc, thus forcing the PSOE to choose between a progressive and a conservative wording, while others prefer not to take the initiative and for the Socialists to they fix them
In Moncloa and the PSOE leadership this Wednesday they assumed Sánchez's instructions and strove to try to mend the tears suffered with Unidas Podemos, despite the fact that the embers of socialist indignation over the bitter debate on Tuesday still burned. "We have a lot to continue sewing," admitted this Wednesday the minister María Jesús Montero, deputy secretary general of the PSOE.
The socialist minister called her own and the purple formation to "lower the tone" so as not to contribute to the climate of internal tension. "We are a coalition government, which means that we are two political parties, and that we have a government program ahead of us that has made great progress, but which still has a long way to go, we are going to exhaust the legislature," said María Jesús Montero. , who insisted on "not exacerbating the statements." "It unites us much more than what separates us," she reiterated. And she appealed to the best glue in the coalition, already at the gates of a decisive electoral cycle: "On the other side we have the PP and the extreme right." "We have to keep moving forward, and not give rise to any escalation of disqualifying words or words that could hurt."
In the same sense, the Minister of the Presidency, the socialist Félix Bolaños, acknowledged that the day before "was not the best debate in history", in the face of the accusations that the spokespersons for the PSOE and Podemos exchanged. “But I am sure that the climate will improve and that there will be a government for a while,” he assured.
And in the Moncloa, meanwhile, they cross their fingers, and are confident that the clash "will not affect future initiatives." In the air, the housing law and the gag law.
