In politics there are also periods of lethargy. These are times when things get so tough that your best bet is to wait for the storm to calm down to see what’s left after the snow. The legislature, and above all the relationship between PSOE and Junts, the most stormy but at the same time essential to complete the investiture of Pedro Sánchez in 2023 and carry forward the pending reforms, has entered that lethargy, to which two key elements are added in a few weeks: the campaign for the Extremadura elections (21 December), which will then be linked to those of Castilla y León and then with the Andalusian elections, if there are no more, and the recess of Congress, which will have only one full week in December and will remain without until the end of January, a non-working month.
There are no longer secret meetings in Switzerland, nor in Brussels, nor intense negotiations, nor photos of agreements, nor agreed communications. Apparently everything is at a standstill between the PSOE and Junts. Yet, informal contacts in Congress between these two groups continue, votes follow one another – two weeks are now approaching with some important ones – and the independentists have once again saved the government from several important defeats this week, especially that of the extension of nuclear power, with which the PP wanted to demonstrate that there is an alternative majority in Congress.
With difficulty, with more than half a dozen lost amendments that the PP presents as a great triumph – “when the legislature began it was news that the Government had lost a non-legal proposal and now the PP is able to amend the laws and publish texts in the BOE with Feijóo’s signature”, summary above – the Executive nevertheless continues to push forward the most important projects and wins 90% of the times when the president of the Congress calls for a vote.
A member of the government tries to relativise the situation, even if many of those interviewed admit that they take the dissolution of Junts very seriously, that they know that it is not a matter of posturing, that this time it is different, especially because the Catalan political situation is very delicate for the independentists, with the Catalan Aliança on their heels, so the future is unpredictable. But the Executive is convinced that, despite some defeats and many other victories, we can move forward until 2027, as long as the economy offers positive data, employment continues to grow and European funds and revenue collection give space to continue with the extended budgets, taking positive decisions, without cuts, which will be difficult to reject at the Cortes, such as a new increase in pensions which will arrive shortly.
“We have to lose the fear of stumbling, we have to get used to the fact that a minority government has to lose votes. In Europe it is absolutely normal, here we still have too much memory of absolute majorities that will not return. 25 of the 27 EU countries have coalition governments. 37% of them are in the minority, like us. Many are from the EPP, Feijóo’s party. What the PP wants to turn into a democratic disease is normal among its European allies”, he summarizes.
While political and media attention is focused on the survival of the government thanks to this break in Junts, which is relative because it does not make the leap towards a motion of censure and therefore does not want to overthrow the Executive, in La Moncloa and in the ministries the feeling you get is completely different. Nobody is thinking about early political elections in 2026. And the meetings, the papers, the projects focus on how to spend European funds, which have a limit at the end of 2026, on how to carry out important initiatives that do not require a parliamentary vote – through royal decrees or regulations – and above all, in the more political part, on how to deal with the regional elections that are already on the horizon.
For this reason, and despite the limited media coverage, La Moncloa prepared for this Wednesday an overwhelming chain of data that the president read to try to demonstrate that the PP communities are partly dismantling the welfare state by opening the way to a hidden privatization, especially of healthcare but also of education, especially of higher education. “Our data indicates that, even if the media is on the side of Junts and the dialectical battles, even if Nogueras has defined the president as cynical, people pay attention to the cost of living, to housing and the state of public services, to healthcare, to education, to addiction. And this is what we will insist on,” says a member of the Executive.
The atmosphere in the Congress this week has already clearly been that of an election campaign, but not the general ones, which no one sees so close, not even in the PP, nor in the government partners consulted, nor in the ERC, nor in the PNV, nor in Bildu, but rather in the regional ones. Sánchez has decided to leave these campaigns behind and directly confront the barons of the PP, who he accuses of weakening public health and education to give business to private ones, which are gaining more and more space. The government’s PSOE campaigns, its best asset, not in vain five ministers are regional candidates, and also for this reason it is difficult to think that Sánchez will not finish the legislature. And from there he compares the two models for mobilizing progressives against this privatization.
Despite this hibernation of relations with Junts, the government maintains its roadmap. This Tuesday the deficit path will be approved, a preliminary step to the budgets that will surely be overturned in Congress. And the bills will arrive after the January break. In the next two weeks we will vote on the Dana decree and the ALS decree, and there should be no voting problems there. And the pension plan is already being prepared, which last year fell to the first and went to the second. But the Executive is preparing to take political advantage of every defeat. “If we raise positive issues and they reject them, they may suffer more, as happened last year with pensions. We will negotiate thoroughly, but we are not afraid. Every stick holds its candle,” says a minister. In parallel, there are also many clandestine movements, such as negotiations with the ERC to try to obtain budgets in Catalonia, which depend on an agreement on the single Catalan financing. On the surface everything seems impossible, but deep down the pieces keep moving.
From the PP they see a completely distressing situation for the Executive. “Their situation is so precarious that it is news that the Government gets one vote, not that it loses several. We have the strongest opposition in history, with a projection of 200 seats, faced with a parliamentary ordeal of the Executive that adds to its complications on multiple judicial fronts”, underline from the Feijóo leadership.
The Government takes it for granted that their big problem is the judicial front. “The opposition is above all judicial. Politics does not harm us”, says another member of the Executive. But they believe the justices have gone so far on some issues that the tables will now turn against them. Especially that of the attorney general. A member of the Government gives an interpretation of the problem that the Supreme Court judges who will try him will face, according to him: “They thought that Álvaro García would resign when he was tried. But he didn’t, and now they have a problem. If they acquit him, which would be the logical thing after what was seen in the trial, they will kill them. But if they convict him with a divided courtroom and several votes against, the scandal will get even worse.” damage an already very deteriorated image. They ended up in a hole for bringing something to trial that should never have come.”
There is a division of opinion in the executive. Some, those who make a more political analysis, take it for granted that there will be a conviction because they believe that otherwise there would be no point in getting to this point. Others, with a more legal vision, believe that it is completely impossible to convict without evidence and with what was seen in the trial, where the UCO’s own testimonies were greatly weakened. In any case – if Sánchez is convicted, he would have to change attorney general – the Government believes that this problem does not put its stability at risk because what was seen in the trial confirms its thesis.
On the judicial front, another decisive issue for the legislature also hangs: the return of Puigdemont. The “sensational victory”, in the words of Félix Bolaños, the EU Attorney General who paves the way for the return of the leader of the Junts, still needs the completion of the sentence of the Strasbourg Court and the endorsement of the Constitutional Court to be protected. In the first quarter of 2026 everything should be ready. But this time too the ball will go to the Supreme Court. And there the hibernation can be prolonged further. But the legislature will go forward, or at least that is the main bet in the political world.
