A negotiation between Podemos and the PNV paved the way for Pedro Sánchez to Moncloa. Six years after that motion of censure, the public fight between those same two protagonists has added another layer of difficulty to the Government’s negotiations in Congress to move forward with its initiatives. The conflict is not entirely new, but it has worsened in recent weeks in the heat of parliamentary negotiations that precede the General State Budgets.
If in 2020 the founder of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, said in an interview that he would like to have a right in the State like the one represented by the jeltzales In Euskadi, “with State loyalty”, in recent weeks Ione Belarra’s party has referred to the PNV as Repsol’s “puppy”. The issue that opened this confrontation a few weeks ago was the negotiation of the tax on electricity companies that Podemos asked to extend and that Andoni Ortuzar’s team sought to water down.
This negotiation between various sides of the Government has already caused a first public exchange between Belarra and Aitor Esteban, spokesman for the nationalists in Congress. “It seems that the PNV is getting nervous. They counted on no one to stand up to them in their attempt to end the energy tax. Josu Jon Imaz’s puppy [consejero delegado de Repsol]”Aitor Esteban, comes out to bite Podemos,” the Podemos leader wrote on her networks after hearing the spokesperson’s criticism. jeltzale.
The Government was working last month on drafting a fiscal package in which it sought to introduce a series of reforms to shore up the revenue gap in public accounts for next year. Within that package, the initial intention of the Executive was to introduce an amendment to make the temporary tax on energy companies permanent, as Sumar had demanded, and requested support from several left-wing forces in the investiture bloc, including Podemos.
But in the middle of that negotiation, the Treasury first reached an agreement with its conservative partners, Junts and the PNV, which consisted of withdrawing this tax from energy companies, which caused a clash on the left and right within the investiture bloc that extended several weeks. It is at that moment when Podemos began to clash with the Basque nationalists.
The conflict has been escalating as the days go by and exploded in the last plenary session of the year in Congress. All due to an initiative by Basque nationalists regarding the eviction of occupied homes.
The PNV introduced an amendment in the processing of a Government law to improve procedural efficiency. What the party was looking for, according to its own arguments, was to ease evictions from illegally occupied homes. The parliamentary majority of the Government ended up rejecting the PP’s veto of that law despite the fact that Podemos threatened until the last minute to add its votes to the popular ones if the Government did not fix the consequences of that PNV amendment.
In fact, both Belarra and the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, were negotiating until the last moment some solution to the legal modification that came into force due to an error in the ERC and EH Bildu vote last November. It was then that Congress gave the green light to a reform of the Criminal Procedure Law that, at the initiative of the PNV, added the crimes of usurpation of residence and trespassing to article 202 of the Penal Code so that these could be processed in abbreviated procedure trials.
“Ione Belarra lies,” Esteban wrote on his networks at the end of the debate on that law on December 19. “The approved PNV amendment is not about evictions, it is about squatters. It does not affect the family that cannot afford to pay for their home. It affects anyone who commits a crime by squatting in someone else’s home. Podemos is in favor of the squat, the PNV is against it,” he added.
Belarra did not take long to respond to the message in the same way. “You know very well, Repsol deputy, that with this amendment you are criminalizing poverty, the most humble families who have nowhere to take shelter. As Rafa Mayoral said, vertical shantytowns. As you can see, you have no contact with social reality,” he wrote.
The exchange continued later in the halls of Congress. Esteban reproached Podemos for its role in the legislature. “What Podemos is doing is absolutely reckless, unless what they want is for elections to be called and their issue is not to improve the lives of citizens, but rather to have elections and win their particular duel with Sumar,” said the PNV spokesperson.
“For some things there is no majority. No matter how much Mrs. Belarra screams, things are not going to change. We can look for alternatives, she cannot. “She is in a corner of the chamber,” he said, annoyed in a statement in which he even spoke of an alternative majority: the one that in the last days of parliamentary activity was articulated in some votes in which PP, Junts and PNV coincided.
This new majority was formed in a context of tense negotiations between the Government and the investiture bloc to be able to carry out its first General State Budgets in the coming months with which to achieve the stability necessary to finish the legislature.
Moncloa now has to deal with this new confrontation between two parties that had understood each other during the last legislature, when Podemos was still part of the coalition Executive. It is precisely the departure of the Government that has allowed the Ione Belarra party to assume more demanding positions in the negotiations in Congress and also to disassociate itself from the so-called investiture bloc.
“We are not partners of the Government,” the Podemos leader often repeats. The distancing strategy has at the same time caused the party to no longer take care of the rest of its parliamentary allies, as in the last legislature.
In fact, in the last months of the last mandate, some clashes between both parties already began to occur, specifically, during the processing of the reform of the ‘only yes means yes’ law. In an interview in The Mailthe president of the jeltzales, Andoni Ortuzar, assured that Podemos together with Vox and Ciudadanos was the worst in politics. “With Urkullu I met a PNV who was always respectful and correct. With Ortuzar, who made fun of Lendakari for being teetotal, I met a macho and arrogant PNV. Comparing Podemos with VOX is not only indecent cockiness, it is an insult to the Basques,” Iglesias responded at that time.
The parliamentary balance is thus even more complicated for the Government with an investiture majority divided into two ideological blocks, with Junts and PNV, on the one hand, and with the rest of the forces on the left. Also with crossed disputes between the Catalan independentists, EH Bildu and PNV and also between Podemos and Sumar. A complex scenario, but one that still keeps the Executive stable not so much because of the unconditional support of its investiture partners but because of the opposition of these allies to the alternative represented by PP and Vox.
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