The day that the economic vice president, Nadia Calviño, stood up the left-wing bench in Congress after a parliamentary question from Vox, a leader of United We Can sarcastically acknowledged the intervention when leaving the chamber: “He has been well claiming our policies.” The irresolvable debate about the authorship of the measures in a coalition government is as recurrent as are the efforts to appropriate those that end up going well. Although it is true that, among that long list of Calviño’s claims before Espinosa de los Monteros, many of them had to do directly with the departments of her partners.
The Government approves the Budgets with a social spending record of 266,700 million and a historic level of investment
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“Don’t you know anyone who collects the Interprofessional Minimum Wage? Don’t you know any young person who has obtained a permanent job for the first time thanks to the labor reform? Don’t you know anyone who benefits from scholarships? At this point in her speech, the applause around the first vice president was already deafening by the Socialist Parliamentary Group, which infected the entire blue bench of the Government and the parliamentary group of United We Can. And Calviño, until that moment, had only displayed three measures promoted by ministries of the confederal group.
The also Minister of Economy later included in her list education, health, free public transport, ERTEs, ICO guarantees, the Minimum Vital Income or direct aid to vulnerable families. In public, what they usually repeat from one side and the other of the Executive is that all these decisions or any other are made by the Government as a whole, whatever the department that has prepared them, but among the leaders of United We Can the feeling has permeated that the PSOE takes advantage of many of its star measures in the final stretch of the legislature.
In fact, some of these policies claimed by Calviño were the reason for real battles with the Ministry of Labor of the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, such as the ERTE mechanism that her department proposed to get out of the quagmire to which the pandemic led. in terms of employment, or the annual revaluations of the SMI. “We stayed a year for him to give the go-ahead to raise the Minimum Wage by 50 euros,” they recall in the vice presidency, where they do not consider it much less a political defeat that the PSOE now claims it as something of its own. After the agreement of the coalition partners to carry out the latest project of the General State Budget of the legislature, the general feeling in United We Can is that many things have been achieved, some of them unthinkable until just a few months ago.
“They told us that it was impossible to raise taxes on the rich, on banks or on electricity companies, but they also said that free public transport was impossible, speeding up the Minimum Vital Income or carrying out the ‘only yes is yes’ law”, recalls a deputy from Podemos. A party leader added: “They also said that a coalition government was impossible and here we are.” Now that the electoral horizon of 2023 announces a final stretch of the legislature turned into a permanent electoral campaign, those of Yolanda Díaz take stock of their passage through the Council of Ministers with the satisfaction of having been able to bring to the BOE “transformative policies” that, in some cases, such as the tax reform to make large fortunes pay more, they have been claiming since their origins and represent, in the eyes of everyone, a political success in the face of the reluctance of the PSOE.
In these Budgets, PSOE and United We Can have also agreed on record investments in strategic items of the left-wing confederal space, such as dependency, the fight against sexist violence, direct aid for upbringing, scholarships, or the extension of bonuses to public transport, an idea that they put on the table during the negotiation of the decree of economic measures to deal with the consequences of the war. And yet, the atmosphere that followed the announcement of the deal had little to do with celebrating a success.
“We are not going to break the Government due to disloyalty from the PSOE, because it would be very irresponsible when we have Feijóo and Abascal sharpening their knives. But I want to say clearly that they have hidden from us the unilateral increase in defense spending and that it is a shame, ”said the spokesman for United We Can in Congress, Pablo Echenique, on his networks on the same day of the announcement. A reaction that many colleagues from their own space did not understand, nor did deputies from other groups allied with the Government who are preparing to show their support for the accounts. “Honestly, I don’t understand about Echenique. The news was that very important social games were increasing until they themselves have taken out the Defense thing. They make life difficult for all of us”, assured one of those deputies, visibly upset.
Within United We Can there is that political discussion: is it a good strategy to focus on what has not yet been achieved with the risk of overshadowing the achievements? Beyond the controversy over defense spending, of which the United We Can negotiators insist that they were aware after ensuring that it did not involve cuts in social spending, the conclusion in a good part of the confederal group and in the environment closest to Yolanda Díaz is that no “These Budgets have very important things that have come out of our proposals, and that must be valued,” they point out.
In Podemos they do not deny the relevance of what has been achieved, but they believe that it is essential not to forget the policies that are still blocked so as not to disappoint the electorate. “If rents have not been regulated because the PSOE does not unblock it, then we say so, and if there is defense spending that seems shameful to us, well, too”, explain those of Ione Belarra, who maintain that it is precisely this “stubbornness” that which has led them to “convince the PSOE” on more than one occasion.
Equality Laws
One of the new political clashes that are coming within the Government in the medium term has to do with the Trans Law. From the Ministry of Equality they admit their “concern” about the possibility that the PSOE “forces a delay in the processing in Congress” due to the divisions caused by the text in a sector of feminism and also within the socialist party itself. With the explicit opposition of personalities from the PSOE such as Carmen Calvo, both in Podemos and in Irene Montero’s department they are convinced that, just as has happened with the ‘only yes is yes’ law or with economic or labor initiatives, their partners they will end up endorsing policies that imply “a clear advance in the rights of the people” that they compare with what the approval of equal marriage by the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero meant in its day.
What is expected is that as the elections approach, the internal shocks due to the promotion of certain policies will progressively decrease, at the same time that the external shocks will increase due to appropriating the merits and disassociating themselves from the failures. “There will be a time when we will have to remind our people who promoted some measures and who blocked others,” they warn at United We Can.
