“A government with a high political profile for a legislature with a high political profile.” Pedro Sánchez did not want to wait for the obvious interpretations of the press. It was he himself who clarified in his appearance without questions and without even allowing journalists access to La Moncloa what everyone saw as soon as the names of the 22 ministers who will accompany him at this start of the legislature were known, although everything indicates that There will soon be a very relevant change: if Nadia Calviño is elected president of the European Investment Bank (EIB) on December 8, the position she aspires to, she will have to be replaced by another Minister of Economy, a decisive position in which The former high-ranking official in Brussels has been in office since Sánchez arrived at La Moncloa with a motion of censure in June 2018.
Sánchez does not hide the evidence: he is a continuing Executive, in which the hard core is not touched, which is given even more power. Félix Bolaños will be super minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts. María Jesús Montero is promoted to fourth vice president without losing her key Treasury portfolio. Furthermore, the entire decisive structure of La Moncloa directed by the Chief of Staff, Óscar López, remains intact. Pilar Alegría is reinforced as the new spokesperson for the Executive. And an Óscar Puente specialized in the dialectical combat with the PP is appointed as Minister of Transport. All of them, in addition to other management profiles but very political ones such as the former mayor of Barcelona Jordi Hereu, or new ministers also very much from the PSOE, such as that of Equality, Ana Redondo, or of Social Security, Elma Saiz. In addition, the heavyweights that were already in the key portfolios remain. All with the intention that this political Government helps Sánchez face a relentless opposition that will also be stronger than ever, with 171 seats and 11 of the 17 autonomies, in addition to the majority in the Senate and local power in the hands of the PP and Vox.
The president has once shown the enormous power and total freedom he has to run his Government: there are territorial balances, but no autonomous baron can condition the formation of the Executive. And another display of power: On Saturday, Sánchez called both those who were not continuing and those who were continuing—who are the majority and some already knew it before—and the new ones, and demanded total silence from them until Monday. They complied with it to the letter, at the risk of his appointment failing. And even those who left the Government did so. “We all know it since Saturday. It is a way to test the discretion of each of the ministers of the new Government,” summarizes one of them.
The opposition has already shown that it will be relentless, and will try to wear down the Government, bolstered by the rejection of the amnesty law, but Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz have responded with a very clearly political and compact Government both in the socialist sector, where all the The new additions are experienced regional socialist leaders, not independent technicians like in 2018, like in Sumar, where the second vice president has left out Podemos, very critical of her, and has brought in people with a clear track record from Más Madrid ( Mónica García), from Izquierda Unida (Sira Rego), from the commons (Ernest Urtasun) and a errejonista but close to her like Pablo Bustinduy. They all have a good relationship with Díaz and have so far avoided public clashes with the PSOE, which speaks of a better coalition than in the previous legislature and a strong and compact Government to face the storm that the opposition and also the opposition have prepared for it. the delicate parliamentary majority in which not a single vote is left over.
Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the PP, propose a legislature like the one seen in the investiture: in the face of a dog and each one with all the political weapons at their disposal deployed. For La Moncloa, the most important thing is that the democratic liturgy has already been launched, there is clearly a Government, which will take office in full this Tuesday, and an opposition, which is redefining its team. And that, they trust, over time should somewhat calm the waters of recent weeks, in which a kind of revolutionary impulse has been experienced on the right with constant demonstrations and many of them massive designed to try to stop the investiture or at least show great social rejection towards Sánchez’s way of coming to power, with an agreement with the Catalan independentists that includes an amnesty for all of them.
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The president is already launching his international agenda and this Thursday he will make his first trip to Israel and Palestine as leader of the country that holds the six-month presidency of the rotating European Council, but above all it will serve in Spain to politically remember that there is once again a Government not in functions but in full exercise and an opposition that is assumed as such. Belgium will take over the rotating presidency starting in January. For this reason, Sánchez will carry out the visit with the Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander de Croo. The two will meet with President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as with the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, with an agenda focused on the impact of the terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas against Israel on October 7. and the critical humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip due to constant Israeli bombings. Sánchez defends a lasting political solution for the region, based on two States, Israel and Palestine, that coexist in peace and security.
Another of the Executive’s priorities to offer an image of political stability and normality, another of the epicenters of Sánchez’s speech, is to be able to approve the Budgets for 2024 as soon as possible, something that will no longer be possible before the end of this year, but it will be little after. The Treasury hopes to achieve this in the first months of the next fiscal year. The partners of the investiture have resisted, to varying degrees, to take for granted their support for the Accounts – the PNV does not seem to be going to put up much of a fight, while formations such as the BNG insist that their pact with the PSOE was only of investiture and does not include the first Budgets—but the Government is sure that it will not have to overcome major obstacles. Another issue will be the negotiation of the regional financing system, pending renewal since 2014 and where even within the two major parties there are different sensitivities according to the needs of each community.
The legislature will be angry and the Government will not have a truce. Neither on the right nor on the left: Ione Belarra reproached this Monday the “definitive expulsion of Podemos from the Government” is a joint “strategy” of Sánchez and Díaz. The general secretary of Podemos will hand over the Social Rights portfolio today to Pablo Bustinduy, a former errejonista who left the party fed up with internal struggles, and is also the son of a former socialist Minister of Health, Ángeles Amador. Bustinduy will work precisely in the same building in which his mother did, that of the Ministry of Health, where Pablo Iglesias installed his vice presidency in 2020. But the most anticipated moment will be the replacement in Equality, which the PSOE recovers under its control after the management of Irene Montero, who leaves the Ministry marked by the controversy of the law of only yes is yes and that he will not even be able to take refuge in his seat in Congress since he did not appear on Sumar’s lists. The concern in La Moncloa is manifest with the future behavior of the five Podemos deputies. It remains to be seen the reaction of Podemos when the first decisive votes begin to arrive, although no one is talking at the moment about the possibility of them moving to the Mixed Group.
The formation of the Government, the third that Sánchez designs without counting the great remodeling of the summer of 2021 and two other surgical adjustments, has finally occurred four months after the general elections of 23-J. A period that has been very long for the PSOE and even though the PP concentrated all eyes with the failed investiture of Feijóo. Sánchez is aware of the wear and tear accumulated by the amnesty law, which he himself ruled out before the elections, and the rejection it aroused in a part of the PSOE with the aggravating factor that La Moncloa and Ferraz remained silent, without giving explanations: the priority was safeguard negotiations with Junts and ERC. Added to the criticism from the right were those coming from Emiliano García-Page or those from the generation of Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra, which were very bitter and uncomfortable for the socialist leadership. The atmosphere became unbreathable in recent weeks due to the targeting and harassment of public officials, acts of vandalism and far-right protests with their epicenter in Ferraz. For all these reasons, Sánchez has decided to organize a large party event this weekend in Madrid to vindicate the new Government and give the party an injection of self-esteem before the starting signal of the most complex legislature since the restoration of democracy. The ministers will promise the position this Tuesday in La Zarzuela before Felipe VI and then they will carry out the transfer of portfolios. Moncloa has decided to delay the first Council of Ministers of the new cabinet to Wednesday, but everything is already underway.
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