Sumar will seek to speed up the regularization of immigrants in Congress and promote the debate on financing

After a year full of electoral events, Sumar is starting the new political year with the intention of deploying its political project for this legislature without further delay. Although aware of the parliamentary fragility of the Government and the difficulty in passing the 2025 General State Budget due to the uncertain position of Junts, the coalition of parties led by Yolanda Díaz will push the PSOE to agree on budgets that include measures to facilitate access to housing and conciliation. In Congress, the group will initially focus its efforts on speeding up the regularization of hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Díaz’s party also wants to open the debate on the reform of the regional financing system once and for all. After the agreement between the PSC and ERC to invest Salvador Illa in Catalonia, which has caused enormous unrest in parties that make up Sumar, the coalition hopes that this movement will finally allow it to address the renewal of a model that has been outdated since 2014.

This Saturday, and in response to the discontent of some of the party’s federations, the First Vice President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, stated at the Socialist Interparliamentary meeting held in Seville that this agreement for “singular financing” – an “economic agreement”, according to Esquerra – could be “extended” to other communities.

The issue has fuelled differences between the parties in Sumar, which do not have a common position on the matter, and is of particular concern to organisations at the regional level, such as Compromís and Chunta Aragonesista. The former have been demanding for years that the situation of “underfunding” in their community be resolved. “We are a plurinational force that takes this plurinationality seriously,” say sources from Sumar, who insist that the reform must be addressed during this legislature.

After a particularly hot summer in the Canary Islands and Ceuta, with their resources overwhelmed by the surge in the arrival of immigrants, and without an agreement with the PP to modify article 35 of the immigration law that would make it compulsory for communities to accept minors, the leftist coalition is distancing itself from the Popular Party and the Socialists on this matter. Party sources criticise the PSOE’s “reductionist” vision, which, in their opinion, is limited to talking about circular migration, as President Pedro Sánchez did on his tour of Mauritania, Gambia and Senegal last week. “It does not solve the problem nor is it an answer for those who reside here,” they point out before advocating regularisation, the establishment of safe entry routes and insisting on the claim of Spain as a “host country” in the face of the rhetoric of the right and the far right.

“The discourse that has been installed is dangerous,” they warn about the narrative that the Popular Party has also embraced. “We distinguish ourselves and we will continue to distinguish ourselves,” adds the PSOE government partner. Precisely, Vice President Díaz came out very harshly against Sánchez on Thursday, after he had described the return to their countries of origin of irregular immigrants as “essential.” Sumar demands that the PSOE allow Congress to close the deadline for the presentation of amendments to the Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP) that seeks to regularize hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who already live and work in Spain. The ILP was approved in April with the support of all groups except Vox, but since then this phase of the parliamentary process has been extended again and again in an attempt, the group denounces, to delay the process and prevent it from moving forward. Precisely Sumar, through Catalunya en Comú, registered a series of questions to the Government last Friday to force its acceleration. The document channels the demands of the Regularization Now movement, promoter of the initiative.

Complicated accounts

The party is not resigned to the fact that the PSOE is giving up on pushing through next year’s public accounts without trying first. “The Government’s obligation is to govern,” say strong sources from the party’s leadership. The Executive already announced last week its intention to take them to Congress, but parliamentary arithmetic is complex and Junts once again demonstrated in the Permanent Deputation on August 27 that it has no qualms about combining its votes with those of the PP and Vox. The PGE are essential for Sumar. It is the opportunity to show its usefulness to the electorate, especially at a time of uncertainty, in which the party has not yet resolved the internal leadership after Díaz’s step back from organic positions and has yet to hold a new assembly to define its future.

In any case, the coalition is seeking to give priority to the housing issue in negotiations with the PSOE. With the majority of communities governed by the PP, the law passed last term to limit rents is difficult to apply. The minority partner wants to push the socialists to regulate tourist and seasonal rentals, expand the public housing stock by mobilizing empty homes and build up to 500,000 apartments for rent at 400 euros, among other measures.

In terms of conciliation, after the previous Executive gave the green light by decree to a temporary eight-week leave to care for children under eight years of age, Sumar is pushing for the first four weeks to be paid, as agreed in the Government pact and demanded by the EU. Last month, the deadline for transposing the last part of the European conciliation directive, which requires this, expired. The group also wants to approve a universal income for child-rearing, which both the Ministry of Social Rights and the Ministry of Youth and Children have insisted on. All this with a budget for 2025 at the expense of Junts and also of Podemos, which has already warned that it will sell its four votes dearly to give stability to the legislature.