The new political year is strewn with mines for the Government

Salvador Illa will be Pedro Sánchez’s safe-conduct at the start of a new year riddled with mines. The burial of the process It is the calling card with which the President of the Government faces a new season in La Moncloa with the 2025 Budgets in the air and multiple fronts to attend to. Sánchez will put his countless political lives to the test in an autumn with ambushes on every corner in which he hopes that society will recognise in the medium term the pacification of Catalonia and its return to institutional normality. Another story will be the misgivings that the singular financing, agreed with ERC, arouses in the rest of the country. And that has once again put the seams of the PSOE to the test when it had barely overcome the heavy digestion of the amnesty law. Sánchez’s latest risky bet, which Esquerra and socialist mainstays such as Josep Borrell consider an economic “agreement” while the vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, denies it and it is not known what will happen, has been the toad that the PSOE has had to swallow in silence for a month. In return, a tangible success: the investiture of the first president not pro-independence since 2010.

The return of the Spanish flag to the Palau de la Generalitat, between the flag and that of the EU, in the meeting that Illa held on Friday with the mayor of Barcelona, ​​Jaume Collboni, also from the PSC, is more than a declaration of intentions. Illa, with each decision he adopts, will be a message in itself that Sánchez will export as an example of a new policy. The priority of the Government will be things to eat, that is, the improvement of health, education, social services and infrastructure, and not the castles in the air of the process. “Illa’s presidency is a key factor of legitimacy for us. We have gone from 2017, with the risk of Spain’s bankruptcy, to 2024 with a government minister who has been elected president with the vote in favour of an independence group like ERC,” sums up a senior official at La Moncloa.

The new one presidentwho swore an oath to the Constitution and promised to “govern for all Catalans” at his inauguration, will continue with gestures of relaxation. On Thursday he will meet Felipe VI in Barcelona at the welcome ceremony for the America’s Cup sailing competition. A nod to reconcile the Generalitat with the Royal Family.

In the absence of a foreseeable majority in Congress, where the smallest vote would be enough for a Hitchcock film, and waiting for ERC and Junts to clarify their leadership in another hot autumn, Sánchez will hoist the good progress of the economy and the return of order to Catalonia with Illa as his standard-bearer. The breakdown of the block politics between independentists and constitutionalists has allowed a change of cycle that heavyweights of the Executive such as the Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños, have celebrated as “the most important news of the last decade”.. Catalan politics is returning to the traditional left-right axis, leaving behind the identity framework in which the PP feels at home and the socialists are less well-behaved. “The PP is criticising our partners, but it voted against Illa’s investiture together with Vox, Junts and Aliança Catalana,” they stress in Ferraz, where they claim the PSOE as “the only party capable of structuring Spain.” The PP is clear about the battering ram of its strategy of total confrontation for the coming months: the singular financing of Catalonia, whatever that means, is a threat, according to its spokesman, Borja Sémper, to “the equality of all Spaniards before the law and before the Tax Agency.” The PP is not going to give Sánchez a break. His implacable opposition of the last year will continue with the same old issues —Catalonia or the investigation of the president’s wife— and some new ones such as immigration.

The PSC and ERC have given themselves until the first half of 2025 to finalise the financing of Catalonia, a margin that in Spanish politics is equivalent to light years. The necessary modification of the LOFCA, the Law on the Financing of the Autonomous Communities, does not have the necessary votes in Congress. In recent days, the Government has begun the pedagogy that the socialist barons were lacking in the face of widespread concern that the pact would penalise the other 14 communities of the common regime. The agreement establishes that it is the Catalan Tax Agency, that is to say the Generalitat, “who manages, collects, liquidates and inspects all taxes”. The “Catalan contribution to the finances of the State” would be based on “the cost of the services” that the central Government provides to Catalonia plus another part destined for “solidarity” with the other communities. This solidarity would be “limited by the principle of ordinality” – that is, if Catalonia is the third that contributes the most, it is also the third that receives the most investment per inhabitant – an unacceptable condition not only for the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, the black beast of Sanchism within the PSOE, but also for the Asturian Adrián Barbón.

This is the enormous puzzle that Montero will have to solve, with a regional financing system that has been out of date for six years. While she finds a way out of the labyrinth, the Government must attend to other pressing issues. The Council of Ministers will resume its activity on Tuesday, in a Council without major issues on the agenda – an initiative on vocational training for workers and another on sustainable local development of Doñana – except for its political background. Attention will be focused on Sánchez’s tour of Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia. Mauritania, where the head of the Executive returns six months after promising an injection of 500 million with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has become the main point of departure for the canoes that reach the Canary Islands.

The number of illegal immigrants arriving has increased by 66% so far this year (31,155 people up to 15 August) and, although the pace has slowed in recent weeks, it is expected to gain momentum with the good weather. The islands concentrate the arrivals, more than 22,000, of which some 5,100 are minors. Their guardianship is a regional competence and Fernando Clavijo, the president of the archipelago, from the Canary Islands Coalition, asked Sánchez for help on Friday in La Palma. The two presidents increased the pressure on the PP, which co-governs the islands and manages a similar situation in Ceuta, to accept the obligatory distribution of migrant minors on the peninsula when the reception systems are overwhelmed, as has been happening for months in the two border territories. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, whose discourse is increasingly similar to that of the far right on migration, continues to refuse to reform the Immigration Law, which was rejected in July with the vote against it by the PP, Vox and Junts. Feijóo, in an interview with Europa Press released this Saturday, insisted that the PP cannot accept immigrants who arrive in Spain brought by mafias to “not comply with the laws”.

The approval of the spending ceiling, an essential requirement for presenting the Budgets and which the Spanish and Catalan independence right also knocked down in the last plenary session of the last year, is the other ghost that the Government has to deal with. And the calendar is pressing. The Constitution states that the public accounts must be presented “at least three months before the expiration” of the previous ones. In short: Montero has barely a month to get the spending ceiling. And she is not completely sure. Junts and ERC are immersed in their congresses, scheduled for the end of October and November, and there is no guarantee that they will support the Budgets. Esquerra has shown its fangs, stung by the semantics that the number two of the Government and the PSOE used to reduce the singular financing agreement.

The Socialists are certain that, despite everything, the relationship remains safe and will not depend on who takes the helm of the Republicans, be it Oriol Junqueras or an alternative candidate. What no one dares to predict is which way Junts will go and which of its souls will prevail, the possibilist or the one that continues to cling to October 1. Montero will work hard to try to get Puigdemont’s party to rectify its opposition to the spending ceiling, but among the Socialists the number of supporters of extending the accounts for the second consecutive year is growing, taking advantage of the fact that the current Budgets are expansive due to the tailwind of European funds. “No one is going to boycott us,” says a minister.

The political message behind a possible extension is significant: Sánchez will not call elections even if there are no new budgets. “The drama would be if the economy went badly, but the opposite is happening,” says a veteran of the PSC. Junts’ support for a motion of censure with the PP and Vox is unfeasible, so the Government is confident that the demands of the independence movement will be limited. The PSOE is playing with the amnesty card, the application of which is not going at the expected pace due to the objections of the Supreme Court.

Sumar will also hold its Assembly in the autumn. The weakness of the junior partner in the Executive and the fragmentation of the space to the left of the PSOE is an added reason why Ferraz does not contemplate general elections on the horizon. Yolanda Díaz resigned after the European debacle as general coordinator and since then a collegiate leadership of those close to the second vice president has guided Sumar through an uncertain transition. The differences between its members have even become apparent with regard to the singular financing of Catalonia, with very harsh warnings from Compromís or the Chunta. In this panorama, Sumar needs to leave its mark and is reluctant to have the Budgets extended. Among its plans to get back on its feet, it proposes the construction of 500,000 apartments for a monthly rent of 400 euros and the creation of a four-week paid leave for the care of children under eight years of age.

Congress will get underway on Tuesday with a Permanent Deputation dominated by the PP’s requests for Sánchez and four ministers to appear. In the case of the president, it is because of the “migratory emergency”, Puigdemont’s new flight and “fraud” in Venezuela.

Against this backdrop, the democratic regeneration plan that Sánchez announced in April will take shape between September and October. Some parties such as ERC, Podemos and BNG have already sent their proposals. The conference of regional presidents, the first since 2022, will be held in September in Cantabria, and the Government wants to focus it on housing. The interest of the PP communities, which refuse to apply price limits in tense areas, is immigration. The opening of the Judicial Year, on September 5, will be the first with a renewed General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). But the governing body of the judges remains paralyzed by the lack of agreement to appoint its presidency, key for its casting vote in the face of the tie between ten conservative and ten progressive members.

The news will continue to be marked by Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, who is investigating the president’s wife. Peinado increased the stupor in the PSOE this week with a ruling in which he assures that “conclusions” can be drawn from Sánchez’s “silence” for invoking his right not to testify as a witness before the magistrate, who has given the parties the recording of his fleeting appearance in July at La Moncloa. The Prosecutor’s Office and Gómez’s defense have filed several appeals to which the Provincial Court of Madrid has not yet responded. A path of thorns that is nothing new for Sánchez and his already legendary manual of resistance. “The next few months are going to be long for the PP,” they predict in La Moncloa. “Feijoo’s frustration is going to increase because he has spent a year thinking that the Government is about to fall. And he will see that we do not fall.”