The Government rules out negotiating the budgets with Podemos: "They are not going to vote with PP and Vox"

The Government does not plan to negotiate with Podemos the general budgets of the State independently. If this intention is maintained, the team led by María Jesús Montero at the head of the Ministry of Finance and Public Function will not sit down with Ione Belarra separately.. In the socialist wing of the Executive they understand that they are part of Sumar and any conversation will have to be with the person designated by Yolanda Díaz, as head of the coalition. This gesture, long demanded by the purple ones, will not occur and the Moncloa also considers that this will not put the 2024 PGE at risk..

At Moncloa they are convinced that there will be PGE in the first weeks of 2024, after a brief extension of the current ones caused by the late formation of the new Executive of Pedro Sánchez. They do not believe that the purple ones are going to be an obstacle and insist that there will be no differential treatment within Sumar. “They are not going to vote with PP and Vox,” they affirm to scare away the possibility that Ione Belarra uses her five deputies to knock down the accounts of a Government of which they are not part, but which they have facilitated by supporting the investiture of the socialist leader. This is a possibility that has been planned for weeks and that worries the Moncloa in the face of the resounding divorce of Podemos and Sumar.

Montero was part of the investiture negotiations and appeared at the signing of some of the agreements that most depend on the budget, such as those of BNG, Canary Coalition or the PNV. This participation in the previous conversations allows the Sevillian politician to keep in mind what commitments with the PSOE partners should be reflected in the budget.. But the accounts will be, above all, a development of the coalition pact between PSOE and Sumar, the result of a negotiation concluded in the wee hours of the morning by Montero herself and Nacho Álvarez.. It is paradoxical that the magenta negotiator has fallen victim to the war between Yolanda Díaz's team and Ione Belarra's team.. The former purple leader fell (and left the first political line) after the vice president offered Podemos that Álvarez would be his representative in the Government. The response was a loud slam of the door..

The Minister of Finance will not be able to negotiate new accounts with Álvarez, something in which she had experience after the first coalition legislature. And it is not clear who will be his replacement as representative of Sumar, but it seems clear that it will not be from Podemos. It must be taken into account that Montero must combine several interests in his PGE project in a more complex economic context than in previous years, both politically and economically.. The different ministries have until December 11 to send their spending forecast to the Treasury. And then it must include the aspirations of the investiture partners. And that is where Podemos wants to play a leading role now that it is not part of the Government..

The ghost of the departure of the purples from the Sumar parliamentary group is still there, with the European elections on the horizon and the Galician and Basque elections in the middle. The problem for the purple ones lies in the loss of economic resources that would mean becoming independent from the coalition with which they ran for election.. In that case, the socialist wing of the Government would open the door to a differentiated negotiation, as explained a few days ago by Ferraz.. As long as that does not happen, the interlocutor is Yolanda Díaz or whoever decides Galician politics.

The thesis they use in Podemos is that the PSOE is more comfortable with Sumar because it represents a less combative left than theirs.. The political roadmap approved by the purples weeks before Sánchez's inauguration defended the practice applied by the purples during the last legislature, which consisted of making public dissent within the cabinet as a form of pressure on the socialists.. Those from Ione Belarra defend that without their participation the most “ambitious” policies would not have been approved and now that is at risk.

The pressure of Podemos

This disagreement on strategy is filled with a series of public disagreements. A few days ago, Pablo Iglesias assured in an interview in Diari de Barcelona that Díaz had worked “to destroy Podemos”, but it is just one of the darts that the purple ones have thrown at the vice president. But there are those who consider, within Sumar, that the Galician “has earned” some of that criticism. A source from the coalition expressed days before the formation of the Government that it was Pedro Sánchez who could ultimately facilitate the entry of Podemos into the cabinet in pursuit of greater tranquility on his left..

That did not happen, Yolanda Díaz chose to leave the purple ones out of their ministerial quota and now the problem has worsened due to the pressure they maintain. And that now causes a new headache for Pedro Sánchez in the design of his new PGE, which already has several obstacles in the way. The main one is the possibility of a blockade in the Senate, since the step prior to the approval of the accounts is to set the stability objectives, coupled with the spending ceiling.. The Budget Stability Law grants the Upper House the right of veto, which allows the PP to exercise its absolute majority to block the processing of the accounts. Montero has a plan to get around this traffic jam, but he has not revealed it yet, beyond putting pressure on Genoa to clear the accounts, which would also have effects for the autonomous communities, the majority in popular hands..