The one in Santander this Friday is the first conference of presidents in two years, but expectations about big agreements are minimal. After months of public disputes between the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the regional governments, the majority of the PP, both of them, attend the meeting with the conviction that the political moment prevents the options for an agreement.
On the agenda are issues that citizens place among their main concerns in surveys, such as health, regional financing for public services and even immigration policies, but the disagreements between PP and PSOE are almost total. The parties assume that perhaps, and only perhaps, progress can be made in housing, after the president himself announced the creation of a public company during the Federal Congress of the PSOE.
In the last few hours, Moncloa has tried to highlight a call that has more institutional weight, at a time of extreme confrontation and polarization, than political weight. “It is an important milestone because it is the first time that there will be a photo of the king with the regional presidents. And that is relevant in institutional terms,” the president said this week in an informal conversation with journalists. Furthermore, unlike the last meeting, which Aragonés did not attend, the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, will be present, which in the opinion of the socialists is a sign of normalization and that the territorial crisis is on the way to a solution. with the independence movement at a minimum in the polls.
The Government has detailed that the family photo with King Felipe VI will take place first thing in the morning, with whom they will have a small meeting until 10:30 a.m. From that time on, Sánchez and the Cantabrian president, María José Saénz de Buruaga, who acts as host, will make a small institutional declaration before the Conference of Presidents officially begins at 11:00, in which each regional leader will have a time rated ten minutes.
In the meeting with the press this week, Pedro Sánchez limited himself to pointing out what was already known about that quote, that the Executive’s idea is to “focus above all on housing”, the great concern of citizens and the only chapter on which there is some expectation of rapprochement between the central administration and the PP autonomies regarding the promotion of public housing.
Asked about the content of the proposal that the Government will bring, Isabel Rodríguez’s ministry has not specified what proposals they will present at the meeting, although they point out the desire to reach an agreement with the autonomous communities, in line with the demands of the head of the portfolio to continue with the regulation, that the administrations expand the financing they dedicate to this matter and the shielding of land and public resources in perpetuity. Furthermore, they have their focus on the Land Law, after the parliamentary failure in May that meant that the PP did not support the measure, which was demanded by city councils of all political stripes, reports David Noriega.
All the sources consulted in Pedro Sánchez’s team agree that the Conference of Presidents is, above all, “a space for co-governance” designed as a “forum for dialogue”, which is why they lower the expectations that a resolution may emerge there. that awakens the unanimous consensus of all administrations. They do contemplate, however, reaching bilateral agreements with some autonomous governments, ground that was already paved during the round of meetings that Pedro Sánchez has held in Moncloa in recent months with the presidents of the autonomous communities.
In principle, the idea of the Government when Pedro Sánchez called the conference was to turn it into a monographic forum on housing, one of the great political priorities of the Executive in the face of the growing wave of protests by tenants over the prices of renting or purchasing real estate. But the strength of the majority of territorial leaders of the PP forced the discussion on regional financing to be included on the agenda after the controversial agreement with ERC on the fiscal “singularity” of Catalonia that allowed Illa to be invested as president.
In recent months, the PSOE has been in charge of trying to calm this debate both behind closed doors and within the party itself. Two weeks ago, in fact, the federal congress of the socialists held in Seville managed to close a unanimous agreement between all the federations in which “singularity” was put aside to emphasize that, above all, the financing reform will be addressed in a “multilateral” and under the commitment to meet the needs of all territories. Although the Government assumes, however, that this will be one of the workhorses of the popular presidents during the summit who also do not have a common position.
The barons of the PP, one against Sánchez
The Conference will thus be dominated by the speeches of the presidents of the PP, who make up the majority of those present. The reversal of the 2023 regional elections gave almost unprecedented territorial power to Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party, who now uses it to oppose the central government.
Feijóo has insisted on achieving a common front of all his regional presidents. And he has succeeded, at least in appearance. The PP called that internal meeting a “summit of presidents,” and Feijóo posed in front of all the regional flags, including those of those communities that his party does not govern and has never governed, such as Catalonia or Euskadi.
Despite the different needs that exist between regions, and the different political styles of the barons, on September 6, the national and regional leaderships signed in Madrid a joint minimum document in which they rejected singular financing for Catalonia without offering a alternative model to the reform of the system that, everyone agrees, is essential.
The document also rejected bilateral negotiations between the presidents and the Government. But all of them went to the Moncloa Palace when Pedro Sánchez called them to a round of meetings to which all attendees came with their own folder of requests for the Government under their arms. The bilaterality that they had previously rejected for Catalonia no longer seemed so out of place if the issues within their competence were addressed.
Only one person stood up to Sánchez: Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Even the Basque president, Imanol Pradales, paraded through Moncloa, who will also attend the Conference of Presidents this Friday in Santander. And the Catalan, Salvador Illa.
Ayuso asked his party colleagues not to attend the meeting with the President of the Government. No one paid attention to her and she even had to apologize behind closed doors before the rest of the barons.
But this forum is different. In the last few hours, multiple regional presidents, also from the PSOE, have assumed that the meeting will have few or no results. It is not argumentative. The sources consulted by elDiario.es, both among PP barons and in the central government, are very not optimistic.
And of the four topics on the agenda that will be discussed, three of them have been imposed by the PP. Sánchez wanted to focus the meeting on housing, but Feijóo’s people pushed to introduce elements such as health, financing or immigration.
Everything, to then block any agreement if they do not impose their entire program. This same month of December already happened precisely with the negotiations to reform interterritorial solidarity in the reception of migrant minors and that Miguel Tellado’s parliamentary spokesperson short-circuited. The Government is already looking at its parliamentary partners.
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