The difficulties continue to grow for the government in Congress. On Tuesday, Compromí’s deputy from the Mixed Group, Àgueda Micó, joined the dissolution of Junts and the continued challenges of Podemos. Both Ione Belarra’s party and the majority fraction of the Valencian coalition, which left Sumar months ago, announced in a press conference that they will not support the path to stability that the government will present to Congress for a vote on Thursday. This is the previous step in bringing budgets to Congress. A priorihis position is already symbolic, because not even the support of Carles Puigdemont’s party is expected, but it is indicative of the growing difficulties of a government hit by corruption cases involving two former high-ranking socialist officials and by the controversial conviction against Álvaro García Ortiz at the Supreme Court.
The Government approved last week in the Council of Ministers the increase in the ceiling of non-financial expenditure of the 2026 Account to 216,177 million euros, or 8.5% more than last year, a figure it had previously negotiated with its government partner Sumar. Podemos’ abstention was predictable. The party had already warned last week that this negotiation could not be separated from that of the Budget and has been reporting for days, through various spokespersons, that the Executive has not contacted them and that it is only looking for excuses to promote electoral advancement. Belarra once again highlighted the red lines of the formation: “bring military spending back to 2%” to allocate that money “to education and public health”; “multiply” efforts “to stop the genocide in Palestine”; “fence” corruption, placing a limit on contracts “with corrupt companies in the administration”; and, finally, “lower rents by law”. “We believe that the government must go on the social offensive, not only because it is what our people need, but it is also the only way for this government to survive in the medium term,” he repeated in the Chamber on Tuesday.
Micó also made his red lines explicit this Tuesday, assuring that he will only support the path if “asymmetric commitments” are reached with communities that favor the interests of Valencians. The spokeswoman explained that what her party is asking for is that the deficit be established on the basis of the financing of each territory, that is, to differentiate the deficit margin (the one proposed by the government is 0.1%) between “underfinanced or overfinanced” communities.
Micó underlined that his proposal consists of setting “0.9% for Andalusia, Murcia and the Valencian Community, 0.8% for Castilla-La Mancha and 0.4% for the rest. “What we want is to guarantee that the institutions that have powers in basic services can exercise them, until this happens, my vote cannot be in favor,” he specified.
To the refusal of these two partners is added the opposition of the right and the far right. The spokesperson of the PP, Ester Muñoz, limited herself to underlining that “it does not seem very likely” that her party “will support a deficit path in which we do not believe”; while Vox’s Pepa Millán announced that she will reject the government’s plan “as expected”. The ultra party parliamentarian interpreted that these budgets are “an exercise in pure propaganda” and argued that the deficit route would bring “more taxes for the Spaniards”. “It promises to reduce the deficit while passing the highest spending cap in history, that is, it aims to reduce the amount of what we owe while at the same time increasing what we spend,” he noted.
