Madrid
19/10/2023 a las 08:07
CEST
The federal leadership orders to “lower the tone as much as possible” and downplay the importance of a debate that they consider to be “an attempted boycott” of Pedro Sánchez’s negotiations
The general secretary of the Andalusian PSOE, Juan Espadas, will take it upon himself this Thursday to give voice to the socialists in the debate of the General Commission of the Autonomous Communities of the Senate summoned by the PP as a battering ram against the negotiation of an amnesty for those accused of the Catalan ‘procés’ within the talks for an investiture of Pedro Sánchez. Espadas is spokesperson for that commission but, beyond that, the decision, as this newspaper has learned, has been meditated and adopted since Ferraz, who has chosen for the leader of the Andalusian PSOE to take center stage. In fact, other territorial leaders of the party had asked to speak, as is the case of the former president of the Valencian Generalitat, Ximo Puigand the federal leadership has decided that it will be only the Andalusian leader who positions the PSOE in a debate that is expected to be bitter and that the socialists will try to resolve without talking about amnesty or “any other future.”
No regional president (Asturias, Castilla La Mancha and Navarra) will go to the Senate in a no-neither strategy drawn up from Ferraz. The Catalan Pere Aragonès will open the debate with a ten-minute intervention and then will be absent “due to agenda issues”, avoiding it being an eleven against one or confronting all the PP presidents alone. The popular barons have celebrated the return of Catalonia to a multilateral forum and speak of “normalization.”
The PSOE will ask for another debate
Espadas will announce that he will be the one who asks a new debate in this Senate committee, once there is a Government, to face in a monographic way a meeting on the reform of the health system autonomous financing. “We will be happy to debate in depth and on an issue that is very important but when it is time,” they point out from the socialist group. He Andalusian PSOE, the largest federation of the party with more than 45,000 members, has become central support for Pedro Sánchez’s negotiations with Junts or ERC. Even in the harshest moments of internal criticism, with Andalusian socialists of pedigree such as Felipe González or Alfonso Guerra urging against an amnesty for Carles Puigdemont, the Andalusian socialists have closed ranks and stood behind their general secretary. Something that would have been unthinkable when Susana Diaz, now also a senator for the autonomous community, acted as Sánchez’s main critic within the PSOE. The former Andalusian president, by the way, maintains a prudent silence and avoids stepping into puddles against the general secretary despite her numerous television appearances. Her senatorial status depends on her party, as she is a member of the PSOE in the Andalusian Parliament.
Sánchez went to Malaga to start the political course, he displayed the support of the militancy in a massive rally in La Rinconada (Seville) and He pronounced the word amnesty for the first time in Granadawhere he also delved into this strategy of encouraging militancy in the face of the harsh attacks from the opposition for an amnesty that, despite the closing of ranks with Sánchez, does raise doubts and generate vertigo due to the political cost it could have for the PSOE in communities like Andalusia, Extremadura or Castilla La Mancha. Nobody hides that it is a matter of difficult digestion in some territories that will require a lot of political pedagogy.
About “futures”
The socialists make it clear that this Thursday in the Senate they are not going to talk about any Government negotiations or the open conversations with the rest of the political groups for the investiture but rather that they will focus on “equality between territories” and that any agreement, they insist , will be adopted “within the framework of the Spanish Constitution.” The federal leadership of the PSOE has tried to minimize the entity of a debate which is considered one more political maneuver by the PP to erode Sánchez. The socialists publicly assume that the Senate, where the PP has an absolute majority, will become this next legislature, if a left-wing Government is formed, a Chamber that brakes the action of the Executive and they believe that this Thursday appointment is just a appetizer, reproaching the PP for “perverting” the institution.
From the PSOE they assure that the guideline is to “lower the tone as much as possible to downplay the importance” of the debate in the Upper House. Espadas’ intervention, lasting ten minutes, will have two parts. First, the general secretary of the Andalusian PSOE will talk about the formal issue and will reproach the PP for having “forced” this call in what he considers “one more attempt to boycott” the negotiations open for an investiture of Sánchez. A process legitimized by the King, the socialists recall, who has formally commissioned the socialist to try to gather support to form a Government and who fulfills his mandate, they insist, “within the Constitution and the democratically established channels.” It will be the central message that the socialists take to the Senate, avoiding entering “the framework” of the PP, which will undertake a strategy of harassment and demolition for the agreement of an amnesty for the leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, in exchange for their votes.
The socialists will reproach the popular ones for “skipping the rules of the game” and anticipating a debate “on hypotheses and futures”, since they insist that there is no formal agreement for an amnesty to debate. “It is an attempt to interfere in the negotiation,” they warn, hence a very generic debate has been raised about “the effective application of the principles of equality before the law of all Spaniards, and solidarity between the autonomous communities,” as requested in the Senate by Javier Arenas and 19 other PP senators.
Dependency data
The PSOE will also talk about “equality and solidarity” in Spain but certainly not from the perspective of the PP, which denounces that an amnesty for Catalan independence politicians will blow up the principle of equality between Spaniards and who also denounce that a dialogue bilateral with Catalonia on issues such as financing, as requested by ERC and Junts, shatters the regional financing model and will subtract resources from the rest of the communities. The PSOE will talk about “how the policies of Pedro Sánchez’s Government have shortened the inequality gap between citizens” and between communities. Espadas carries in its folder the data on dependency provided by the Association of Directors and Managers of Social Services, who denounce a cut of 98 million with respect to the contributions of the autonomous communities. The PP communities come out badly in this report and Andalusia appears at the bottom as the one that invests the least.
The last call of this General Commission of the Autonomous Communities in the Senate, in April 2022, was held to address the management of European funds and despite the presence of the vice president and Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, all the regional presidents delegated to their Treasury advisors. The previous one, in April 2020, to talk about the coordination of the pandemic management had the absence of two barons, the Galician, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the Andalusian, Juan Manuel Moreno.
2023-10-19 06:26:14
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