The economy, the weapon to keep the elections | Spain

For days there is no lack of the reminder that the PP gives to the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in the morning. The popular recall through very real videos what it was and what he said in 2018, before his successful motion of censure that led him to Moncloa and when he was still leader of the opposition. Sánchez said six years ago, from the speakers’ gallery and the trails of party events, which, without budgets, Mariano Rajoy could only convene elections. The then chief of the Executive managed to get them out, finally, and he agreed that the legislature was guaranteed. It was not so. Two weeks later, a motion of censure took the popular government ahead, with budgets included. Sanchez cannot reproach the PP today to paraphrase him and expect continuously that or budgets or elections. But that continuous reminder will fall into a broken bag. There will be no public accountsbut not elections either. Its certainty in which the legislature can continue, at least currently, is based on the sustained line of the good progress of the economy.

Discrepancies with coalition partners –the last on the imperative increase in defense spending– They will not alter, according to government interlocutors, the forecasts of economic growth. Just 10 days ago, the Bank of Spain slightly raised the growth forecasts by 2025 and maintained as those of 2026 and 2027. A 2.7, two more tenths, for this year, and sets at 1.9 and 1.7 the next two. Of course, he points out that such technical assessments are subject to « extraordinary uncertainty, » given the convulsive world situation. The data does not differ from those who handle all international organizations.

These numbers encourage government In the midst of coalition turbulence; of the absence of certainties about the political behavior of Junts; of the opposition increasingly found, in the case of Podemos, and the most demanding of ERC, Bildu and BNG in breaking the debate and positions on the increase in defense expenditure. Canarian coalition maintains its line of agreements or disagreements attached to its position on each matter, usually away from marked ideological character positions.

Maintaining the decision and speech that without budgets the legislature can be sustained will depend on the economy, they point out in the government, convinced that it will be. Economic growth will come from employment and productivity, and both vectors are flattering, in the conjectures transmitted by the Executive. The discrepancies on the investment in defense will not alter the course of the economy, they defend in Moncloa, knowing that there are very complicated weeks. This same Wednesday the first general debate on the defense needs of the European Union will be opened once the continent is alone, without the umbrella of the United States, already occupied in understanding the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and in Zanjar with the concessions that are necessary the war in Ukraine.

The fronts to which Sánchez must attend are in the Spanish Courts and in Brussels. How to convince the countries of the European Union and the commission that the contribution to the defense that Spain can do should not only be measured in the percentage of GDP, and the partners that the effort in “security”, as Sánchez reiterates to avoid the word « Defense » « That evokes weapons, » he will not reduce social spending. It does not give up a joint European debt, to loans granted to member states and even transfers as happened during the pandemic. None of this has yet achieved, but does not plan to give up, hand in hand, on this occasion, of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, for the social and political similarities of Spain and Italy.

The PP will not accompany the government or outside Spain in the strategy on the dedication of the country to defense expenses. Nor has the executive show that he wants to participate to the popular of his projects. From the outset, the PP can move with criticism ease, without the need to be very explicit in its proposals, given the cacophony of the government coalition. The popular ones have already told their European co -religionists, in case the information did not arrive at all, that last week the Government members, at the proposal of the BNG, voted an initiative in favor of the departure of NATO Spain. Pure symbolism, without practical effects, but more than enough to highlight the huge differences of concept between the PSOE and add on safety and defense.

All a bit precipitous, once the world of the western block is in a very incipient phase of the construction of a new world security order. Sanchez believes that the representative of the Government of Spain can continue to be in this forced new stage of the European Union walk because the economy gives the country the necessary stability. The message that the excellence of the last budgets will allow with its extension Spain not to be in progress.