Last Thursday, Pedro Sánchez left the plenary session of Congress that had just approved the housing law directly towards the microphone set up in the courtyard of the Lower House, where he proclaimed that the law had just come out of the parliamentary oven (which is now only waiting for the process of being ratified in the Senate) is one of the "milestones" of the legislature and even, he stated, "of democracy."
Hyperboles aside, the truth is that the President of the Government -who immediately afterwards, and without accepting any questions from the press, went to the official car- was able to breathe a sigh of relief at that moment due to an indisputable fact: the legislative ordeal of a legislature, worth it. the redundancy, marked by the precarious majority of the coalition government between PSOE and Unidas Podemos and the difficulties in many important parliamentary votes, had ended.
Or if the cyclist simile is preferred, Sánchez had just crowned at that moment the last mountain stage of his term, and what lies ahead (always in purely legislative terms, another matter is that of the electoral battle with Alberto Núñez Feijóo) are plain or formal stages before the revalidation of the general elections at the end of the year.
And this circumstance has another important reading for the coalition partner, Podemos, aware that little can be asserted in the final stretch of the legislature, given that the coalition pact signed after the November 2019 general elections between the then purple leader, Pablo Iglesias, and Sánchez himself is already practically exhausted. Both in the credit chapter and in the debit chapter.
a package sold out
In the first, together with the aforementioned housing standard, agreed with ERC and EH Bildu, it is worth registering the labor reform, the star project of the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, which was about to derail in February 2022, with the famous fall of the former deputy of the Popular Party (PP), Alberto Casero, and precisely the opposition of those of Gabriel Rufián and the batasunos.
And to this inventory of renowned laws one could add the Law for the Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom, popularly known as the 'only yes is yes' law, as long as it has not just been reformed with the essential support of the PP and the furious opposition from Podemos and left-wing parliamentary allies, after the sentence of a thousand sex offenders was lowered. The final vote on that law, on Wednesday in the Senate, was another relief for the president.
February 2022
Labor reform, the most agonizing vote
The most agonizing vote of the legislature and surely the one that could change the most things on February 3, 2022. Only an error by a PP deputy freed Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz from a severe correction.
March 2023
The partners knock down the reform of the gag law
ERC and EH Bildu also did not join PSOE and Unidas Podemos in the reform of the so-called 'gag law', one of the main promises of the coalition. But this time with more success, because they made her fall.
April 2023
The reform of the 'yes is yes' with the support of the PP
The most conflictive law, since it began to be negotiated at the beginning of the coalition in 2020, ended up being reformed in the midst of a harsh schism between PSOE and Podemos and with the support of the PP, as evidenced this week in the Senate.
April 2023
The housing law is approved
Last Thursday, Pedro Sánchez was able to breathe easy after approving the housing law with ERC and EH Bildu, one of the main reforms agreed upon in the coalition agreement with Unidas Podemos. Sánchez defined it as one of the main "milestones" of the legislature and, even, "of democracy."
Among the reforms promised by the coalition and not carried out, the one of the Citizen Security Law of the Rajoy Government stands out, branded by the left as a 'gag law', in which PSOE and Unidas Podemos, on this occasion hand in hand, they did not obtain the support of ERC and EH Bildu.
That happened last March, but by then Sánchez already discounted that there would be no agreement in the face of the claims of the Catalan and Basque separatists over the State Security Forces and Corps. And that is precisely why the president focused his efforts on making this agreement possible in housing, a very important rule for the appointment with the polls on May 28, in autonomous regions and cities, where it is reflected more in first person. the problem of access to purchase and rental.
For Sánchez, the most difficult moments of his term are behind him. Among those that also include the pandemic, which also gave him headaches in the legislature. The states of alarm with which the confinements were intended to be protected and which would end up being overthrown by the Constitutional Court (TC), were not easy to carry out. When groups like ERC stopped supporting them, almost at the same time as the two main opposition parties, PP and Vox, they had to resort to variable geometry and the Ciudadanos (CS) vote, as later in the labor reform.
1,300 million for FP, another government measure at a party meeting
The Council of Ministers will approve next week a new item of 1.300 million euros for Vocational Training. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced it yesterday pending a PSOE pre-campaign act in Pamplona. As he did with the first housing advertisement, Sánchez saw a government announcement made at a party event. As explained by the PSOE, the purpose of this new item will be the creation of 45.000 new bilingual Vocational Training places. In addition to 824 new digital capacity centers and more than 1.500 applied technology and entrepreneurship classrooms.
Legislative production until the Cortes is dissolved in the autumn will no longer respond to the commitments made with the partners. Laws such as the one on official secrets, promoted by the PNV, now more separated than ever from the Government, or the one on pimping, presented alone by the PSOE to meet the ambitious objective of abolishing prostitution, await their turn. But they are not part of the main road map of a coalition that reaches the end of its journey.
