The blackout silences the debate on investments in defense | Spain

Portugal has its dissolved parliament at the elections on May 18, but, even so, two days after the great blackout in the Iberian Peninsula, on Wednesday three acting government ministers appeared before the Permanent Commission of the Chamber To give explanations. In Spain, without elections in sight, everything goes more slowly. Here the Congress has been stopped for three weeks for reasons from the Holy Week vacations to the PP request of Suspend the plenary that would coincide with the Congress of the popular European in Valencia. So we will have to wait until next Wednesday, when the President of the Government will give an account to the Chamber of what happened and the response of his cabinet.

Pedro Sánchez’s appearance in Congress on Wednesday 7 was already planned before the blackout with another matter in the agenda: the increase in more than 10,000 million euros of defense spending. Sanchez does not want deep discrepancies on the matter between the PSOE and its allies on the left.

The presidential appearance has now acquired another channel after the mass blackout. Already on Tuesday, ERC and BNG had registered the request for parliamentary explanations of the president, and this Wednesday the PP was added. The first, two solid allies of the government, did it without reviewing criticism, while the popular ratified that they will not leave this matter either outside its total and truce offensive against the Executive. « The Spaniards want to know what happened, the causes that caused it, its consequences and that are assumed responsibilities. It is very worrying the abandonment of functions of the government and that we still do not know what really happened, » the PP insisted to justify its demand for parliamentary clarifications.

Sanchez anticipated the opposition and on Tuesday he asked the Congress to expand the matter of his appearance including the blackout. This was formalized on Wednesday, once the Chamber closed the agenda of the Plenary. The socialist leader must attend a double front, with two issues of enormous relevance. A coincidence that, on the one hand, complicates you and, on the other, can provide some advantage: to leave the debate on security in the background, the one that threatens the stability of the conglomerate of forces that give you support.

In the issue of defense spending, Sánchez lives in the paradox that those who share that this increase is necessary – the right – are not willing to support it and those who provide support are opposed frontally to such measures. The strong discrepancies expressed by groups such as IU or Podemos, together with the episode of the failed contract to buy bullets to Israel who has placed the Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska in the pillory, will be some of the ballots with which the president will have to deal with.

The great blackout, an unprecedented event and of great social impact, has displaced these other things these days and everything indicates that it will also attract attention within a week. Another explosive issue for Sánchez and more if it fails to advance in the inquiries about The ultimate reason for the fall of the network. There the president tells that his parliamentary allies, at least for the moment, also demand explanations, but without exhibiting the belligerence of the forces more to the left about the military budget.

The PP has already shown in recent days that it will not miss the government in any field. Until the approach to the response to Donald Trump’s tariffs seems frustrated. It would be a surprise that Alberto Núñez Feijóo left that line lasts next Wednesday when boarding the blackout. Of course, the PP leader runs their risks in that field. Discrediting the Government for its response to the fall of the electricity supply provides Sanchez the opportunity to rebound with the very questioned management of the DANA by the Valencian popular executive and the porphyia of the President of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, by hold on to the position against wind and tide, and with the consent of his party. The “Mazón” label has become a defensive wild card for the socialists in the most burning debates, when the popular download all their artillery on issues such as the Ábalos case.

More delicate for Sánchez is the debate on the future of nuclear energy, which will surely raise Feijóo, as is doing these days. There the government is in the minority, as already seen in a recent vote in the Chamber, which agreed to process a PP law proposition to prolong the life of nuclear plants. This is another of those issues in which Juns coincides more with the state right than with the executive that contributed to lock.