The Government is putting pressure on the PP to save the debt reduction that divides its allies

Not a day of respite for Pedro Sánchez's government in this turbulent legislature. The sun came out on Monday, after the agreement with ERC to extend the debt relief for Catalonia to 17,104 million euros and after Junts buried the question of confidence that it demanded from the head of the Executive. In Moncloa they saw that it was demonstrated that "there is more tranquility and stability" in the legislature. But on Tuesday the sky became overcast again, with new storms on the horizon, once Carles Puigdemont's party and even Compromís - which is part of the Sumar space, a minority partner in the Government coalition - questioned their support for the entire assumption of regional debt proposed by the Executive, which amounts to 83,252 million euros.

The proposal that the Fiscal Policy Council will approve today still lacks an absolute majority in Congress

This debt relief for the autonomous communities of the general regime will be approved today without any problem in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF), with the favourable vote of the Government and the Generalitat of Catalonia, which will be joined by Castilla-La Mancha and Asturias –governed by the PSOE–, even though all the PP communities vote against it, as Alberto Núñez Feijóo announced.

The Executive confronts the leader of the PP with his barons: “Forgive the debt or condemn the citizens?”

The problem is that this initiative must then be transformed into an organic law, which requires an absolute majority of 176 seats in Congress for its approval. The majority of the investiture could save the procedure without the PP's participation, but Junts and Compromís did not guarantee their support yesterday. So the Government is once again immersed in uncertain juggling and is once again directing pressure against the PP, to confront Feijóo's political interests with the imperious financial needs of its regional presidents.

“The debt is transferred from one place to another and is used to buy the rent for Moncloa,” Feijóo warns

"Forgive or condemn?" asked the PP leader yesterday, the government spokesperson, Pilar Alegría. "Do you want to forgive the debt of your autonomous communities or do you want to condemn the citizens of all the autonomous communities?" she asked.

Andalusia claims that this “money does not exist” and Madrid refuses to “pay the debts of the separatists”

In Moncloa they warn that the PP communities will vote today against the CPFF reduction, “because they know that it will be passed without their vote.” “But then everyone will demand the cancellation,” they say. The question, they warn, is what the PP will do when the measure is voted on in Congress, if it does not have an absolute majority guaranteed. “I want to see them there,” challenges a PSOE minister. And Alegría insisted that the cancellation will benefit “all” the communities of the general regime, which could allocate the resources that they now dedicate to paying the interest on the debt to “improving public services” for their citizens. The PP's vote against, he concluded, “would be inexplicable.”

But Feijóo insisted yesterday that none of the regional presidents of the PP will fall into the “trap” of debt forgiveness, which he also considers “unfair”. The debt, said the leader of the Popular Party at an event at the Madrid Business Forum, “is transferred from one place to another”, but it does not disappear, so he promised his barons would reject en masse an initiative whose only purpose, he said, is to “buy the rent” of the Moncloa “with public money”.

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And, indeed, from Andalusia, which regrets not being able to use that saved money, which also “does not exist”, since “it is all a mere accounting operation”, and denounces the “great deception” of an unnecessary reduction because it pays the debt “comfortably”, to Madrid, which “is not going to negotiate anything that means that the people of Madrid and the rest of the Spaniards pay the debts to the Catalan independentists, who are thieves and shameless”, passing through the Valencian Community, which warns that “not a single euro of that forgiveness could be used to spend more on health or education, nor does it affect in any way the reconstruction after the flood”, the eleven communities presided by the PP will arrive at the CPFF meeting with a resounding no.

What happens from now on is a different story, as all the regional leaders of the PP are waiting to open the can of worms regarding regional financing and are demanding a new model that will allow for faster investments, such as the arrival of the AVE in the case of Extremadura. “We will have to study the issue step by step,” say some barons. “We have to wait,” say others.