Sánchez takes flight before a black autumn in which he hopes to add support for the 2023 budgets

No one has seen his own (political) death as closely as many times as Pedro Sánchez. And no one has shown more ability to rise from its ashes and take flight. This week he has done it again. After a historic defeat in Andalusia, the traditional granary of votes for socialism; a more than questionable management in the face of the death of thirty people at the Melilla fence; inflation above double digits; notable erosion in the polls and the umpteenth crisis with his coalition partners –this time on account of an increase in defense spending committed to the Atlantic Alliance–, the President of the Government is heading for an autumn that appears black, after the mirage of consumption in summer. The prolongation of the war in Ukraine may sharpen the rise in prices and further damage the expected growth.

But if anyone believes in Pedro Sánchez, that is Pedro Sánchez. And with the effervescence that the success of the debate on the state of the nation has brought about, in La Moncloa they do not rule out even having the necessary support to approve the last Budgets of the mandate, a scenario that a few weeks ago nobody even dared to consider. “The president has put on the face of a NATO summit,” they say ironically in his team, alluding to the outstanding role that the head of government played on the international scene and that was widely praised by even Joe Biden himself.

The apathetic climate in which the socialists were installed has suddenly returned to hope and, against the mantra installed by the right about an imminent change of cycle, they believe that nothing is lost and that, despite the polls, there is room for Win the election. Sánchez goes out for all and wants the Government and the PSOE at full throttle.

Next week there will be no meeting of the party’s federal leadership due to incompatibility with the presidential agenda, but in Ferraz they are prepared for the call of the Federal Committee in the first week of September. It will be there where the highest body of the party between congresses hears from the president the coordinates with which to face the municipal elections of May 2023, which is the appointment that historically anticipates the result of the general elections that follow. Sánchez does not want an apathetic or depressed organization like the one he faced in the Andalusian election campaign.

It was after that unmitigated defeat when the president was heard in Ferraz the most severe reprimand in memory before the federal leadership and also when speculation began about the possibility that he made some adjustments to end the internal wars that are being waged in the party and also between the leadership and the Parliamentary Group, which always have the deputy general secretary, Adriana Lastra, as the protagonist. This is a battle that he wants to resolve as soon as possible and no one rules out that he can do so before August, although the president maintains his secrecy.

The debate on the state of the nation has served, in any case, to rearm itself in a complex social framework, in which citizens demand urgent solutions to contain the rise in prices and, above all, to repair the loss of power purchasing. With the messages of empathy towards the working middle class, the clarity of the speech, the social protection measures announced in Congress and the clear shift to the left, the president seeks to ensure that there is not the slightest doubt about the Government’s sensitivity towards the who suffer the most from the effects of the crisis. And, incidentally, respond to his second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, who had declared days before the quintessential parliamentary appointment that the Executive lacked a soul.

“Soul? ‘Soul, heart and life’”, as in the song, is the response that the presidential circle gives to the promoter of the Sumar platform, who learned about the measures announced by the president at the same time as all Spaniards. “Soul because there is the capacity to feel and think, heart because the approved measures show that we are in charge of the state of mind of the people and a lot of life ahead”, assures a socialist minister sarcastically.

In La Moncloa they congratulate themselves not only for having given depth to the legislature with the announcement of extraordinary taxes for 2023 and 2024 to energy companies and banks, but also for having broken the framework of the electoral advance with which the right flirted and they reply hammering their media terminals.

Even in some sectors of the PP, which this week has missed the opportunity to consolidate the advantage attributed to it by the polls, they admit that Sánchez has regained the political initiative and even that he has managed to unite the government coalition, although they cling to the seriousness of the economic crisis for Sánchez to leave La Moncloa.

The enthusiastic response of United We Can to the measures announced by the president have undoubtedly given the Government an appearance of stability, beyond the sterile claim about the paternity of the same and that the purples can use them electorally to demonstrate the usefulness of his presence in the cabinet.

Sánchez has also managed to amalgamate the investiture block, although with different degrees of adherence. And the best proof of this were the votes on the proposed resolutions that followed the debate on the state of the nation and the support with which the Democratic Memory laws came out –seven parties voted in favor–, the reform of the Judiciary that it seeks to put an end to the PP’s blockade of the renewal of constitutional bodies and the second package of anti-crisis measures. Alliances can be fragile or unstable, but so far the PSOE has not lost a single vote in the lower house.

An inflation that does not give truce

What happens from September remains to be seen because, despite the good employment data, economic uncertainty is a fact and Spain, but also all of Europe, is preparing to contain consumption, a drastic energy saving plan in winter and a figure of inflation that does not seem to be giving up. All this has already caused Brussels to reduce growth forecasts for the last stretch of the legislature. Sánchez will have to deal with all this, despite the fact that the PSOE maintains that “there is time” to come back and that the general elections are still a long way off. So much so that the president is going to get tired of listening to his parliamentary allies that he does not govern without listening to them, that structural changes are needed in addition to conjunctural measures and that neither his patience nor his understanding with the government are infinite. “If the turn to the left is not a conjunctural pose, let it prove it, in addition to structural reforms and with a purely social content in the General Budgets for 2023,” they claim from the parliamentary left.

At the moment, in the economic area of ​​the government they work with the fact that inflation will not let up due to the prolongation of the war in Ukraine, but also with forecasts from the European Commission that announce a growth of 4%, above the European average, of the euro zone and of the large economies around us. And it will be with this scenario that the public accounts for 2023 are designed and for which in the PSOE a few days ago there were doubts about whether they would have the necessary parliamentary support to be approved. Now, they don’t rule it out at all. “Sánchez has fought in worse places,” recall those who appeal to his immense capacity for resilience and in warning to those who consider him dead once again.

PS The PSOE was always a party with an amazing facility to go from depression to euphoria. And this week it happened again. How long it lasts, we’ll see.