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One of the key partners in keeping the left-wing coalition government in power in Spain, the right-wing Catalan pro-independence party Junts per Catalunya, decided to vote against the Budgetary Stability Targets proposed by the government.
Despite a steady loss of support in numerous elections, the Socialist Party has been able to revalidate a majority made up of left-wing parties and pro-independence nationalist partners, who see in Pedro Sánchez’s government a unique opportunity to challenge the constitutional order and advance their secessionist agenda for two of Spain’s richest regions: Catalonia and the Basque Country.
However, the socialists have paid for each support with measures of vital importance for the political future of Spain: from the processing of an amnesty for pro-independence leaders who embezzled public funds to organise an illegal secessionist referendum, to the proposal of a special economic agreement that allows Catalonia to manage 100% of its taxes without taking into account the needs of the rest of Spaniards.
The favourable treatment that the Sánchez administration has exercised in favour of independence has always been focused in one direction: to generate legal and economic inequality between Spaniards.
In this way, instability and inequality have become the key that Sánchez needs so that his minority representatives have the support of small secessionist groups and can perpetuate their leader in power.
However, Sánchez’s policy of concessions has backfired after having to compete against his own partners in Catalonia.
Junts, whose exiled leader—Carles Puigdemont—fled Spanish justice for holding the illegal 2017 self-determination referendum and has asked for an amnesty for his crimes, has positioned itself against the budget that the Socialists need to govern all Spaniards. The Amnesty Law enacted by the Government to placate to the separatists, however, did not benefit Puigdemont, after the Supreme Court ruled out that possibility.
However, his partners are beginning to take their toll on Pedro Sánchez. Sánchez’s lack of support on this issue looks like a terrible defeat for his government: the approval of these objectives would be the first necessary step for the elaboration of a General State Budget that would allow the government to manage public finances in accordance with its objectives.
As far as its support is concerned, the government did not expect Junts to vote against it.
According to the pro-independence party, its representatives in the Spanish Parliament would have voted against it because the Ministry of Finance would not have heeded the demand of the Catalans by requesting more economic resources.
The fragility of the government shows the complicated situation in which Spaniards are immersed: A minority government that has not been able to formalise more than one budget in six years, dependent on small parties that represent minority groups and place the Spanish government at the feet of the pro-independence movement.
Each year of Pedro Sánchez’s legislative term, in which the socialists are capable of ceding any competence and changing their minds in order to remain in power, means more concessions to independence and more institutions colonised by the left.
This whole situation, which stems from the fact that the current government does not have a representative majority, far from being denounced by the Von der Leyen administration or members of the European People’s Party (EPP), is implicitly supported by the political establishment in Brussels, leaving the interests of Spanish society unprotected in favour of an unscrupulous politician.
However, the instability of the socialists and the far left also seems to be their undoing.
With no chance of executing their objectives, not even when it comes to the administration of public finances, Sánchez and his partners face three long years ahead that seem insurmountable.
The contempt his partners feel for him will, sooner or later, end up falling on the socialist voter.