In just one month, Spanish politics has not experienced one turnaround, but two or three. Milestones such as the case of José Luis Ábalos, the Íñigo Errejón scandal or the relationship between the pro-independence parties and the Government have been buried by the DANA catastrophe in Valencia. The reconstruction of the devastated municipalities will take months and aid to the hundreds of thousands of people affected will require an enormous mobilization of economic resources. And its impact will mark the negotiation of the General State Budgets that Pedro Sánchez already openly points out as essential to be able to provide the response required by a climate crisis of such magnitude.
“Of course we will need new General State Budgets,” admitted the president during this week’s appearance at the Moncloa in which he detailed the first deployment of urgent aid. When asked by the press, the leader of the Executive stated without hesitation that if the new accounts were already decisive from a purely political point of view for the stability of the legislature, the economic effects of the DANA now make them something peremptory.
“In this first Royal Decree-Law we are talking about 10.6 billion euros in aid. There are many economic resources, many others that we are going to have to request from community institutions and others that we are going to have to disburse from our public accounts. This will make us review the impact on the deficit and public debt. And find the most agile and most effective vehicles possible within the framework of the Budgets to be able to provide the most effective and equitable response possible as soon as possible,” Sánchez explained.
The PP was then quick to infer from the president’s words blackmail and use of the victims of the catastrophe in search of political gain in the form of Budgets to support the legislature. In fact, Feijóo’s people even warned for a few hours that the million-dollar aid announced by the Government was dependent on Pedro Sánchez getting support for his accounts. Although, in that last case, nothing could be further from the truth.
The day after the package of measures estimated at 10.6 billion was approved, the decree was published in the Official State Gazette and, therefore, came into force. Because this aid has no connection with next year’s Budget project and its financial allocation will come from an adjustment of the current budget through an extraordinary credit. Within a month, the majority of Congress must now validate this decree and thus authorize the increase in public spending.
Another thing is the disbursement that is to come in the medium term. And, at that point, the approach in Moncloa is that the Valencia tragedy completely changes a good part of the political and economic parameters in which the legislature has been situated until now. As it did in its day with COVID-19 and with the effects of the war in Ukraine, the Government now places the need to respond to the devastated areas of Valencia and to the citizens who have lost everything, such as the nuclear aspect around to which public accounts must be oriented. And they also present it as an argument with which to convince their partners that they should support these accounts.
“If there was any reason to approve them before this DANA, it is clear that there is more now. I said that I would not evade my responsibility to present public accounts and in this context that responsibility is multiplied to colossal limits. And I hope that we have the majority support of the Chamber to approve Budgets that are even more necessary today than yesterday,” Sánchez stressed during his appearance.
If anyone on the president’s team expected that glove to be picked up in an office on Génova Street, the expectation was frustrated. The PP has transferred its support in Congress to the decree of urgent measures, but no one in the popular ranks has even outlined the hypothesis of being able to support Government Budgets that, in addition, they know would underpin Pedro Sánchez’s mandate until 2027 .
In case it had some type of contagion effect or as a mere communication strategy when conveying a message of unity in the middle of the catastrophe, the Valencian socialists have already taken it upon themselves to announce that they will support the accounts presented by Carlos Mazón. In an interview this week on Cadena Ser, the Minister of Science and general secretary of the PSPV-PSOE, Diana Morant, announced that the Valencian socialists will give their affirmative vote to the budgets of the Generalitat for 2025 and that “they will be at the level of help” citizens after the DANA catastrophe.
When asked if they will support the regional budgets for 2025, Morant, who assured that from the first day of the tragedy he told Mazón that he could count on her as minister and as general secretary of the PSPV-PSOE, responded: “It doesn’t fit no doubt; In addition, we will help Mr. Mazón so that these budgets adequately reflect the needs of our neighbors.”
Meanwhile, the Government’s conversations with the different political groups in Congress to advance the path of stability and the new accounts have also been altered by the management of the disaster in Valencia. For the past ten days, most of the ministers have been focused on promoting the responses of each of their departments, some of which have yet to be outlined and announced, as in the case of the Ministry of Labor. But the idea is that, when political normality gradually makes its way, negotiations will be resumed with a boost and a twist to the initial approach.
The plan with which the Ministry of Finance was working was that the bulk of the new Budget project would be made up of the work advanced a year ago with the parliamentary groups and which finally did not materialize due to the early call of the Catalan elections. But it is Pedro Sánchez himself who insists that the new emergency situation must now permeate everything.
“We are going to offer the parliamentary groups a new budgetary framework to address the realities of each of the territories, particularly those communities, such as Valencia, that are affected by this climate tragedy,” he declared.
It remains to be seen whether or not this challenge to the unity of the Government in the face of the negotiation that is to come paves the way to the accounts and softens the strong postures adopted by some parliamentary allies, especially the Catalan independentists. If this is achieved, the Government would have the support it demands to face the emergency in Valencia. And along the way, Pedro Sánchez would get the political lifeline that he longs for in order to survive the rest of the legislature.
#Government #puts #pressure #partners #carry #Budgets #cover #aid #DANA
