The difficulties do not stop growing for the Government in Congress. This Tuesday, the Compromís deputy in the Mixed Group, Àgueda Micó, joined the continued challenges of Podemos. Both Ione Belarra’s party and the majority faction of the Valencian coalition, which have announced in a press conference that they will not support the path of stability that the Government will present this Thursday in Congress for its vote. This is the previous step to bring the Budgets to Congress. A priorihis position is already symbolic, because the support of Carles Puigdemont’s party is not foreseen either, but it is revealing of the increasing difficulties of a Government affected by corruption cases involving two former high-ranking socialist officials and the controversial conviction against Álvaro García Ortiz in the Supreme Court.
The Government will raise the non-financial expenditure ceiling of the Accounts for 2026 to 216,177 million euros, which is 8.5% more than last year, a figure that it previously negotiated with its Government partner, Sumar. Podemos’s abstention was foreseeable. The party already warned last week that this negotiation could not be separated from that of the Budget and has been denouncing for days, through different spokespersons, that the Executive has not contacted them and that it is only looking for excuses to promote an electoral advance. Belarra has once again exposed the red lines of the formation: “revert military spending to 2%” to allocate that money “to education and public health”; “multiply” efforts “to stop the genocide in Palestine”; “fencing off” corruption, putting a limit on contracts “with corrupt companies from the administration”; and finally, “lower rents by law.” “We think that the Government has to go on the social offensive, not only because it is what our people need, but it is also the only way for this Government to survive in the medium term,” he repeated this Tuesday in the Lower House.
Micó has also made its red lines explicit this Tuesday by ensuring that it will only support the path if “asymmetric commitments” are reached with the communities that benefit the interests of the Valencian. The spokesperson explained that what her party is looking for is for the deficit to be established based on the financing of each territory, that is, to differentiate the deficit margin (the one proposed by the Government is 0.1%), between the communities that are “underfinanced or overfinanced.”
Micó has stressed that his proposal consists of establishing “0.9% for Andalusia, Murcia and the Valencian Community, 0.8% for Castilla-La Mancha and 0.4% for the rest. “What we want is to guarantee that those institutions that have powers in basic services can exercise them, until this happens, my vote cannot be favorable,” he stated.
Added to the rejection of these two partners is the opposition from the right and the extreme right. The PP spokesperson, Ester Muñoz, has limited herself to pointing out that “it does not seem very likely” that her party “will support a path of deficit in which we do not believe”; while Vox’s Pepa Millán has announced that they are going to reject the Government’s plan “as expected.” The parliamentarian from the ultra party has interpreted that these Budgets are “an exercise in pure propaganda” and has argued that the deficit path would bring “more taxes for the Spanish.” “It promises to lower the deficit while the highest spending ceiling in history is approved, that is, it aims to lower the amount of what we owe while increasing what we spend,” he noted.
