The PP is left alone in Congress in defense of its energy strategy | Spain

The lonely deputy of Unión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN), Alberto Catalán, was all that the PP could recruit this Thursday in Congress in support of its energy strategy. The rest of the Chamber – Vox included and except Junts, which abstained – voted against the non -law of the Popular Law that, in the midst of the controversy over the blackout of April 28, exposed the general lines of the Energy Policy alternative of the first opposition party. The PP resigned to force a separate vote on nuclear energy, that would probably have been defeated as well.

After the great blackoutAlberto Núñez Feijóo’s party decided to reactivate and bring to the Plenary of Congress a proposal that had already registered six months before in the Chamber and remained hibernate. It requested, among other things, to renounce the calendar for the closure of nuclear plants from 2027 and until 2035, review energy taxation so that “new tax figures are not generated or created” or elaborate a national renewable plan that “recovers the balance between different technologies” and “resolves the congestions in the network”.

Following April 28, the defense of nuclear energy has been one of the central lines of the PP speech, which points the thesis that the cause of the blackout could reside in the supposed insecurity of the renewables. His deputy César Sánchez was evidenced again by defending the proposal before the plenary, last Tuesday, and Feijóo himself during Pedro Sánchez’s extraordinary appearance in the camera the next day To account for the blackout. On that issue, the popular had achieved on February 12 that the Plenary of Congress approved a text that requested to reconsider the closing calendar of the centrals. In addition to the support of Vox and UPN, then the initiative went ahead thanks to the abstention of Junts and ERC.

The PP could try to repeat it this Thursday, at the end of the weekly plenary, when it was time to submit the new proposal discussed two days before. To general surprise, Feijóo’s group renounced the initiative to vote separately by points, showering the nuclear part. And this time everything pointed out that the defense of atomic production would be defeated.

ERC had justified its February abstention as a gesture in defense of workers from Catalan plants. But in Tuesday’s debate, his deputy Teresa Jordà already made it clear: « The time of the nuclear ends. » This time your vote would be negative. If Junts, with ambiguous pronouncements in public, remained in abstention, as happened, the initiative would surely be defeated by a very narrow margin of a vote. The PP, of course, would have the support of Vox, nuclear enthusiast.

Given that panorama, the popular chose to vote the complete proposal, without unraveling, which deprived them of the support of the extreme right. Santiago Abascal’s party had presented an amendment, rejected by the popular, which, among other things, demanded the maintenance of coal plants. Given the refusal to incorporate their positions, he opted for the No. So finally the PP energy plan only managed to gather 138 votes, compared to 204 against (PSOE, Vox, Sumar, ERC, EH Bildu, PNV, Podemos, BNG and Canarian Coalition) and the 7 Abstentions of Junts.

The popular compensated him with a triumph: they got Congress to claim the government « to fulfill the constitutional mandate to present the State General Budget project by 2025, » even knowing that it would be defeated. The PP had already promoted Another equal text in the Senatewhere it has an absolute majority. Neither this nor the one approved this Thursday in the lower house entails any legal obligation for the Executive.

This location to the government to bring a project of accounts of the State to the Chamber was in a broader motion, that in this case the PP did decided to submit it to a vote separated by points to facilitate the support of what interested him most. The part that requested some budgets obtained 183 votes in favor, from PP, Vox, ERC, Podemos, BNG, CC and UPN; 158 against PSOE, add, EH Bildu, PNV and former socialist José Luis Ábalos, and 7 Junts abstentions. With the same backups, the second point of the text claims to the Government that immediately remites to the Courts the objectives of budgetary stability and public debt. However, a third section was rejected that urged the accounts to be presented before next month “in order to include Military spending commitments”Assumed by the Government. At this point, ERC, BNG and CC went to No.