Ramón Tamames and Vox will be the stars of the parliamentary show of the week with their extravagant motion of censure, but parallel battles will be fought in Congress to that of the ultra-right seeking a peculiar institutional approval in case the electoral flute sounds and Alberto Núñez Feijóo is the flutist. The PP leader does not have a seat in the Lower House and, although the regulations allow him as a senator, he will not be a passive spectator in the front row of the debate. If Vox and Pedro Sánchez launch against the leader of the popular, they will do so on an absentee. Thus, he has to turn his gaze to the other bank and, out of the corner of his eye, to the European delegation that is investigating the Pegasus case in vain.
There is no doubt that Sánchez will emerge victorious with a vote that preserves his presidency, but not the future. It is in the hands of the president to decide what image he wants to leave for posterity of the most bizarre motion of no confidence in the history of democracy: empathy with the citizen in economic distress, arrogance in the face of the ultra-right, disdain for the PP, gratitude to the partners, a bit of everything...
What will not cover the comfortable vote –despite the abstention of the PP– against the heterodox programmatic proposal of Tamames and Vox is the sentimental crisis within the coalition government; the crisis of confidence with the majority of the investiture that, despite everything, has propped up the legislature; and the separation of all of them without reaching the divorce that the electoral race forces them to do. In ten days, the government schism with the reform of the law of only yes is yes, was followed by the schism with ERC and Bildu with the gag law; the rearmament of the progressive troops with the pension pact and start over with the Housing law. The result of the motion of censure will heal the wounds on the scoreboard in the hemicycle, but the calendar imposes hostilities on the way to the polls.
The motion of no confidence adds to the electoral strategy the difficulty of how the rest of the political forces relate to the ultra-right. In Catalonia, ERC promotes a municipal sanitary cordon for Vox, PP, Cs and Valents that it wants the rest of the parties to sign. An “anti-fascist” commitment that draws from the past, since it was the votes of Manuel Valls for Ada Colau that wrested the mayoralty of Barcelona from Ernest Maragall. The Republicans now want Jaume Collboni and Xavier Trias to join the initiative "or they will not want to get away from hate speech."
The PSC is not a friend of cordons sanitary and recalls that in the Catalan election campaign it was the pro-independence parties that certified the veto of the PSC in writing. Until Pere Aragonès agrees on the budgets with Salvador Illa and Junts recovers socio-vergence to make sense of his opposition to the ERC minority Government.
Vox is not the opponent of the Republicans, but the PSC. The ultra-right did not appear in Catalonia in the last municipal elections and the pull in the Catalan ones led them to win in... Vilamalla and La Pobla de Mafumet (5,218 inhabitants between both populations). With whom the Republicans have to run to the sprint is with the Socialists. The race has started this week. Gabriel Rufián will interpret on Tuesday his "the Government cannot get away with it" from the motion of no confidence and the ERC script includes reprimanding Sánchez for a certain "self-confidence" towards the right. "The lesser evil, the 'we are the best among all the worst', there comes a time when it no longer fits," says the ERC spokesman in Congress. And exploit the espionage of Pegasus with Pere Aragonès in Madrid as a victim.
Sanchez responds. He accuses ERC of making an error in the "electoral calculation" with the gag law and Illa chooses her objectives carefully. He started the legislature pointing to the management of the Mossos and Catalan in education and now he is pressing the Government for its reaction to the drought and is delving into the unforced error of ERC in Santa Coloma de Gramenet with the promise of a second nursing home . Despite everything, the maxim in ERC, with municipal veto included, is that it will neither actively nor passively facilitate governments with the extreme right. You can raise the price of future support for Sánchez, but not withdraw it if the numbers come out. And if not... Now it's time for vetoes, Barcelona, the metropolitan area, Lleida, Tarragona... and forget about the lesser evil.
