The permanent partisan political tension in The congress and the recurrent parentheses and electoral stoppages of this 15th legislature have conveyed a feeling that legislative and parliamentary work has been scarce, when after seven months we reach the end of this first period of sessions. Some spokespersons for parties allied with the Government demand that it, especially the PSOE, finally activate its work with more projects and laws to promote in the Official State Gazette. The raw data reflects another image. The Government boasts of having already approved, processed or validated a total of 41 initiatives, directly or through its groups. The majority with their investiture partners, so they understand that this alliance is consolidated. The right of the PP and the extreme right of Vox voted together until May more than 65% of the time. The conservative independentistas of Junts deny having agreed anything with the PP to agree on the vote against the Government’s proposals.
In recent weeks the parliamentary group of the PP in Congress has launched a strategy to divide the votes of almost any proposal or motion that is discussed by points, in some cases up to 21, when they observe that the coalition in the PSOE Government and Sumar can separate due to some divergence or one of its partners distance themselves, to cause a greater number of defeats. Every week its spokesman, Miguel Tellado, appears to conclude, given the evidence of these setbacks or coordination errors between the allies of the progressive majority, that the Government is exhausted and paralyzed, demands that elections be called and puts an end to the caricature of that the Executive of Pedro Sánchez can barely continue in power to continue in his positions, with his official cars and in the Falcón, in the face of the transfer and “blackmail” of the Catalan nationalist seats.
To these long recurring criticisms and in any type of appearance by Tellado, however, are also added the more specific ones from some partners, such as Sumar, ERC, Compromís, EH Bildu, the PNV or the BNG, which require Sánchez “less letters to citizens and more BOE”, in an expression of demand to resume the political and legislative activity in which everyone from Íñigo Errejón to Gabriel Rufián have agreed.
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The Government and the PSOE accept that these seven months of the legislature have been peculiar, with one non-working month and four electoral campaigns that have caused several slowdowns in the sessions, especially those controlling the Executive. The PP has demanded, as the party that is always in opposition usually does, that some weeks of July be enabled to recover lost plenary sessions and it is more than likely that this will happen. But both the Executive and the socialist group reject the established idea that the legislature is being unproductive. They have made a first assessment and have highlighted that in these months a total of 28 bills have been approved or processed and are in the conclusion phase, another eight by their parliamentary groups and five royal decrees have been validated, on matters as relevant or symbolic as the amnesty, the ALS law or parity (see box). All parties except Vox ratified a reform of article 49 of the Constitution to replace the term handicapped with people with disabilities.
In the PP they denounce, on the other hand, that the activity is null, that the president of the Cortes, the socialist Francina Armengol, is neither a neutral arbiter nor is she clean of accusations of corruption as they display every time the investigative commission meets. on the purchase of health products during the pandemic. And they emphasize it this way to contrast their work in the Senate, where they enjoy an absolute majority and have been able to stop projects and activate others. In the PSOE they reply that neither the two PP bills accepted in their first step in Congress nor the 13 that came from that party in the Senate have made any progress either in presentations, commissions or plenary sessions. The popular ones emphasize that it is the progressive majority in the lower house that stops them from moving forward and suffering another defeat.
Given this panorama, in many sessions the two main parties entertain themselves during the voting on projects, propositions or simple rhetorical motions by watching each other out of the corner of their eye to cause some scare or parliamentary failure to the contrary, for which they need the support of more parties. Sometimes this tactic requires prior polling work and other times, as happened last week, those responsible in the groups for clearing up this task wait in their seats to see what the lottery of the vote of the most unpredictable allies falls into. Normally Junts, which has already warned the PSOE in several sessions that it will vote in favor only of what is convenient for Catalonia and its leader, Carles Puigdemont.
This behavior of Junts has in some cases benefited the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, which has gone so far as to make it explicit that it will ally itself with whoever if it serves to compile defeats for the Government. The Popular Party have even advanced that they intend to promote this situation in future plenary sessions, but from Junts, sources in its leadership deny having had any contact with the PP in this regard and confirm that they will vote in line with their independence claims and in that sense they do not even accept approximations. real with ERC in Congress, where their relations continue to be bad in Catalan electoral terms.
In the PSOE they are aware of how dangerous it is to depend on Junts to carry out projects and continue with the idea of cultivating the mostly progressive union of investiture and seduction both in Catalonia and in the ERC Congress, which encourages unrest and distrust of the seven basic seats of Puigdemont’s party. The socialist group has analyzed the 67 votes carried out in Congress until May and has confirmed that in 44 cases PP and Vox voted together (65%), compared to the 22 that PP and PSOE did the same or the only four that the socialists agreed with the ultras of Santiago Abascal. Between May and June there were another 46 votes (some with dozens of points inside) and in the majority (almost 75%) PP and Vox voted the same again.
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