Editor TLN
The chroniclers of the time say that Adolfo Suárez often complained about what he called “the Madrid sewer”, alluding to a reduced universe of politicians, journalists and professional conspirators determined to make public debate unbreathable but, above all, in turning the President of the Government into the origin of all the problems that the country was facing. It was the late 70s of the 20th century and that head of government, who was endorsed with the same responsibility for terrorism as for the economic crisis, ended up resigning.
Pedro Sánchez is not Adolfo Suárez, the Spain of today is not the Spain of then and the current president does not speak of sewers, but he does speak of completely hidden powers that maneuver against his Government. The difference between one and the other is that Suárez left and Sánchez has never thought of anticipating elections, as Alberto Núñez Feijóo claims, much less stampeding. Far from the demoralization and frustration that invaded the first president of democracy, the current one is rather one of those who stands up, grows in the face of adversity and is used to being reborn from the ashes. He did it as general secretary of the PSOE and is trying now as president of the Government. Only in this way can it be understood that, in the midst of a serious institutional crisis caused by the political and judicial right, a Spain installed in the culture of disagreement and confrontation and a notable wear and tear in the polls, made a triumphant balance of 2022 on Tuesday and He will show confidence that the polls will validate his work. There is no doubt that the president has entered electoral mode or that he is preparing to redouble the clash with the PP in a year with regional elections in May and general elections in December. And he warns: “It will be a very intense year.”
“We govern for the people and I am convinced that this is going to give electoral results, whatever the PP polls say,” responded a Sánchez who recalled that more than four years ago, when he began to govern, corruption and the courts monopolized public debate and today they are the number 18 concern of the Spanish. Convinced that his bet at the request of his ERC partners to modify the crimes of sedition and embezzlement is risky, the president justified the changes in comparative law and in the homologation of penalties with the main European democracies.
Moncloa is determined to fight the electoral battle also in the contrast between the way in which the PP faced the Catalan problem and how this government does it. And, although Sánchez affirmed that the independence movement “goes against the times” and wanted to make it clear that in no case would there be a referendum on self-determination, he recalled at the same time that the 2017 crisis was possible because there was a right-wing government that did not stop the threat. This did not prevent him from also stating that the process, with the disconnection laws, the referendum and the declaration of independence, was a “disgrace” and “an international shame” that was produced by an “enormous irresponsibility” of an independence movement that brought Spain “to the brink of the abyss”. Today, his commitment to what he himself called “risky decisions” seeks to avoid a repeat of that situation. And, for now, the result, he affirms, is that “the Constitution is fulfilled throughout Spain, also in Catalonia.”
The PP is left alone in the blockade and the breach of the Constitution
The president turned the PP during his balance at the last press conference of the year into “a problem for Spanish democracy” precisely because of his refusal to renew the CGPJ in flagrant breach of the Constitution and contrasted this attitude with the one he had in the opposition. “When the independence movement placed us before the abyss of breaking territorial integrity,” he recalled, he and his party supported the application of article 155 approved by Rajoy. “The Lessons of Patriotism and Constitutionalism [prosiguió] The PSOE can give them if anything, not the PP. The Socialists have always been within the Magna Carta, in the opposition and in the Government”.
In its eagerness to clear the path of obstacles between now and the next elections and pacify the clash between institutions, the Government scored, barely two hours after Sánchez’s appearance, the goal of having managed to unblock the Constitutional appointments, after that the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) unanimously agree to appoint the president of the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court, César Tolosa, of a conservative tendency, and the former president of the Fourth Chamber of the high court, María Luisa Segoviano, a progressive. The agreement came 198 days after the mandate of four magistrates had expired and after an unprecedented situation in which a divided court urgently suspended a parliamentary process to modify the election system and the arrival at the Constitutional Court of the two candidates it appoints the General Council of the Judiciary.
Tolosa and Segoviano had been proposed by the conservative sector and both went ahead unanimously, with the vote of the 18 members of the body, including the eight progressives, who unexpectedly resigned their candidate, magistrate José Manuel Bandrés. The decision to give in to the claims of the still conservative majority was designed on Christmas Eve and was carried out with secrecy to prevent the block that acts at the dictates of the PP from concocting another feint to maintain the blockade. The result is that, after almost ten years of conservative dominance, the Constitutional will finally have a majority in line with the one that came out of the polls in 2019.
The PP, which did not expect the result of the vote, thus remains the only institutional actor installed in the breach of the Magna Carta by keeping the renewal of the CGPJ blocked. And it’s been four years now. In this, and in everything else, Sánchez maintains that Feijóo is the same as Pablo Casado and that nothing has changed: “Breach of the Magna Carta, no to everything and insult and disqualification.”
Two models to get out of a crisis
The economy is another area in which Sánchez is also interested in distinguishing himself from the right and contrasting two models in the face of economic ups and downs. Neither autumn has been as black as the prophets of the apocalypse predicted, nor has the gale caused by Putin’s war swept away the government, as the right wing expected. Hence, the president prefers to talk about the economy while the PP diverts the focus on the decline in inflation or the successes achieved by the Government in Europe with the Iberian exception and the cap on the price of gas and prefers to seek wear and tear in its parliamentary dependency of CKD.
Advance and protect are the verbs that the Executive, according to Sánchez, has conjugated and will conjugate “whether there are elections or not.” And in this context, he took advantage of this Tuesday to announce the sixth package of measures against the crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. A plan that includes the abolition of VAT on basic foods and a reduction of 10 to 5% for oil and pasta, as well as a check for food for incomes of less than 27,000 euros. In total, 4.2 million families will receive aid. The reduction of 30% of urban and interurban public transport is also maintained in the territories where the regional and municipal governments complement it up to 50%, as well as the free Renfe commuter passes, rodalies and medium distance throughout 2023. The reduction in electricity and gas taxes is extended for one year, the limit of 2% to the annual rent update and six months, the suspension of evictions and releases for vulnerable homes, among other measures approved in previous plans.
“Ten years ago Spain imported bailouts for its banking sector and now it exports fair and effective economic solutions to the rest of Europe,” boasted a Sánchez willing to step on the accelerator of social protection. In what remains until the general elections, the president will not miss the opportunity to remember that the response that the right gave to the financial crisis was to create a country “whose sole objective was to compete on low wages, job insecurity and cuts in the welfare state “While yours to the war in Ukraine is to make our country compete in social and territorial cohesion.”
And, furthermore, the data is with you because this year, Spain will end up with growth well above forecasts, of more than 5% and, according to all predictions, it will avoid the dreaded technical recession in 2023, which the whole will suffer. of the eurozone. Our country is one of those in the Eurozone that also registers the lowest inflation. And all to a large extent because of the more than 45,000 million public money already allocated to the protection of families. Rightly so, the economy has become for the PP a matter to be avoided.
