Congress does not escape the rigors of summer either and causes unusual situations, not to say comical, such as being able to distinguish whether a deputy is on the left or on the right at a glance. No need to pay attention to his interventions. A look at the neck was enough. The tension has reached such heights that even the tie has become politicized and has become a sign of identity in Congress. Spanish politics resumed parliamentary activity this Wednesday with the blocks clearly differentiated by their clothing in the Permanent Council. Their conservative lordships wore a tie. The progressives did not, and it was not uncommon for them to take off their jackets in a session as heated as half of Spain. Pedro Sánchez’s recommendation to avoid the tie as much as possible these summer months, due to the temptation that he could suppose to lower the air conditioning, threatens to become the last cultural war. Things of politics, the president recovered the garment this Wednesday in Colombia, where he began his official trip through Latin America that will take him through Ecuador and Honduras. Meanwhile, the political arena in Congress was still just as hot as in July. And it will go further when entering the final stretch of the legislature, as the regional and municipal elections in May approach, the intermediate stage of the general elections scheduled for the end of 2023.
The only concrete decision left by the day, in a Congress still at half gas and under construction – the deputies will have to vote on the decrees and laws of this Thursday electronically for this reason – was the extraordinary appearance, promoted by the PSOE, of the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, to explain the incident involving the train that entered the forest fire in Bejís (Castellón), which left several injured. The minister will inform why on August 16 the medium-distance train that covered the Valencia-Zaragoza route was not alerted to the dangerous situation. Panic led several travelers to abandon the convoy and be injured by the flames.
The PP requested the appearance of seven ministers to give explanations for the wave of fires, the drought, the dialogue table or the employment data, but the only one that prospered was the one that the PSOE caused. The PP intended that the First Vice President and Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, also do so; the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz; the third vice president and minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera; the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños; the Defense Minister, Margarita Robles; and that of Health, Carolina Darias. The socialist spokesman, Patxi López, maintained that the rest of the PP’s requests to appear “do not see the need for urgency”, and stressed that the commitment is that the rest of the ministers appear in the ordinary period, “when appropriate”.
Beyond the specific fact of the appearance of the Minister of Transport, the Permanent Council served as a warm-up for the plenary session this Thursday. The request of the President of the Parliament, Meritxell Batet, requesting those present to “carry out their task responsibly”, immediately ran into the attacks of the right-wing parties to the Government and the replies of the Executive. Guillermo Mariscal, general challenger of the popular group, opened hostilities drawing a bleak picture. “There has not been a forest activation plan or adequate resources,” he said, ignoring that the powers to fight fires belong to the autonomous communities. Mariscal also denounced the lack of infrastructure to combat the drought, with Spanish water reserves at 36.9% of their capacity. The reproaches included the importation of Russian gas or that “the electricity of France is financed with Spanish gas” thanks to the Iberian exception agreed with Brussels, which has allowed energy prices to be cheaper than in the rest of the EU.
The session became at times a kind of competition between the Conservative parties to see who could go the furthest. “The Government intends to continue dragging itself until the end of the legislature, it kneels [con sus socios nacionalistas] and by doing so it brings Spain to its knees,” said Ciudadanos spokesman Edmundo Bal. But it was the Vox representatives who, by far, went the furthest. “This is a government that comes from Sánchez’s deception at the polls and tramples on the rule of law,” said Ignacio Gil Lázaro. His ultra colleague José María Sánchez spoke of “an unconstitutional government in its recalcitrant actions, to continue in La Moncloa with the support of anti-constitutional, republican forces opposed to national unity. Unpresentable”. The responses of the PSOE can be summarized in that of Isaura Leal: “You feed fictitious territorial conflicts with electoral interests, stop the agitation and start building solutions.” “Do the exercise of asking yourself why fewer people vote for you in Catalonia and Euskadi with this type of speech,” observed the ERC spokesman, Gabriel Rufián. “Keep it up because all your deputies fit in a van,” he ironically recommended to Ciudadanos.
Not even the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Paris in World War II served as a meeting point for all parties. “You, patriots of the Spanish right, do not know what day it is today? On a day like today, in 1944, a battalion of Spanish Republicans were the first to enter Paris to liberate it from fascism. They were La Nueve, does it ring a bell? They were an example of the best of our country”, said Lucía Muñoz, of United We Can. Silence was the answer she was met with.
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