Congress hasn’t held a state of the nation debate since 2022, but this Wednesday there will be a plenary session in Parliament that will address everything from the international political situation, to corruption cases and the recent rift with Junts. The PP and Vox will again try to surround Sánchez with the judicial front, while left-wing allies will call for more courage and social media, more housing and a green, non-nuclear energy agenda.
This Wednesday’s megaplenary session began as a normal convocation after the participation of the Spanish Government in the European Councils and several international summits, but the PP usually takes advantage of these opportunities to include other debates, on this occasion, the latest developments of the Koldo case, the cases against Leire Díez or Begoña Gómez as well as the ongoing trial against the Attorney General and the conclusions on the anti-corruption recommendations contained in the GRECO report of the Council of Europe. On Tuesday, in the Council of Speakers, the opposition asked that the president also be included on the agenda to discuss how Junts’ decision to abandon the investiture majority in the votes could affect the governability of the country. Both the president and the groups will have more time to discuss in the Chamber, in a session that will last hours.
For the People’s Party, this “judicial week” should be definitive for the Executive and for Sánchez to dissolve the Cortes and call elections. And they support it, in addition to the judicial consequences of some political scandals, with the same parliamentary complexity, even more unstable after Junts’ announcement that he will reject all the projects and initiatives that come to Congress. Feijóo will insist this Wednesday that “there is no longer a parliamentary majority, but on the contrary, there is a majority against the government.” The popular speaker of the Chamber, Ester Muñoz, interpreted from this distribution of seats that “the government is legal, but it is not legitimate” and therefore should not continue.
Meanwhile, Sánchez, who will set the pace with a first intervention without time limits, will face an increasingly complicated Congress, but will try to put fire on his sardines by concentrating his efforts on the PP and above all on the management of his autonomies, with two significant crises, one in the Valencian Community which led to the resignation of Carlos Mazón and another in Andalusia, with errors in breast cancer screening. The Government has added that of public services among all the issues that will be discussed, precisely so that Sánchez can talk about the management of the PP, which dominates 11 autonomies and is starting to pay the price for problems in healthcare, education and dependency, despite, according to Sánchez, his Government having given the autonomies 350 billion more than what Mariano Rajoy gave them, reports Carlos E. Cué.
But Congress, its debates and, above all, its votes, are more convoluted than that linear portrait, as we see almost every week and will be portrayed again this Thursday. Not even all the left’s usual allies are on the same page. Podemos has already warned the president on Tuesday that they will take advantage of Wednesday’s session to read him the primer of his very optimistic vision of the economy, as he expressed last Sunday in his interview with EL PAÍS, and to reaffirm not only that they will not allow changes in the country’s energy policy and that they will facilitate the expansion of nuclear power plants as will be debated on Thursday with a PP amendment that Junts could support, but that they are calling for the nationalization of Repsol through a bill company, due to its contaminating condition.
Podemos is not the only partner that opposes the extension of nuclear weapons and this will make another parliamentary vote difficult. On Thursday, the law on Sustainable Mobility will be discussed and voted on in Congress, which has included a PP amendment in the Senate calling for the extension of the life of these systems. Sumar and Compromís have announced that they will not sign it. Parliamentary spokesperson, Verónica Barbero, recalled on Tuesday: “The closure of nuclear power plants is a commitment of the government’s agreement. And we will not allow our partner to distance itself. The only possible energy future for our country is through renewable sources.” Podemos has also asked the Government to veto this amendment, if it reaches the plenary session, in its prerogative to avoid these measures if they affect the budgets.
Even in the PSOE they do not agree with this amendment nor with the preference for nuclear energy over renewable energy, as certified by its spokesperson, Patxi López, but they defended, like the Government, the complexity of posing the veto, because it has no budgetary content. It was eventually admitted by the Council and will be voted on on Thursday. López said Tuesday that the Senate did not move that amendment in time for its normal acceptance, but then it arrived in an extraordinary way. Now it’s up to what Junts will decide, who could vote with Vox and PP, and force the request for this extension, also putting the ERC in difficulty, which is not a nuclear enthusiast but does not want to boycott the extension of the life of the plants installed in Catalonia.
What the ERC will underline this Wednesday is the obligation for the coalition executive to take other housing policies in Spain seriously and with more courage. Already on Tuesday in the plenary, an ERC bill for the application of fiscal measures against real estate speculation was discussed which, among other solutions to the “main problem of the country”, as Rufián defined it, proposed to create a progressive tax on the accumulation of third-ownership homes and to offer a reduced VAT to young people under 35 with low incomes for their first home. The other left-wing partners supported him. PP, Vox, UPN, Junts and PNV n. The PSOE supported some of Rufián’s theses but did not clarify its vote.
