An unwinnable Christmas no-confidence vote against Sánchez?
🔊 A flurry of urgent legal reform proposals on Friday morning in Madrid created political urgency too.
🔊 AUDIO
Junts, Puigdemont's Catalan separatist party, has tabled its amendment to reform the crime of the misuse of public funds, to remove it altogether if the money is not taken for personal gain. Esquerra, Junqueras's Catalan separatist party, has tabled its amendment this morning to reform that same crime "with the aim of advancing in the dejudicialisation of social and political life and of limiting the potential arbitrary actions of the state to persecute and repress the Catalan independence movement" and to reduce the maximum sentence to three years in jail. They say in their press release that their fundamental aims are still an amnesty and a referendum.
The Socialist Party and Podemos, currently the two halves of the Spanish government, have tabled their own amendment to introduce a crime of "illicit enrichment", if a politician increases his or her personal assets by more than €250,000 without justification. The Socialist Party and Podemos have also tabled another amendment to reform the voting process for appointing members of the General Council of Judicial Power, which has been blocked for four years: they want to lower the threshold from a three-fifths majority to a simple majority, and impose penalties for hindering the process. The conservative sector of the judiciary is reportedly now rushing to meet before the socialist-communist government changes the law.
Vox has announced it time for another motion of no confidence against Sánchez and that they will start talking to other parties today to put that in place, with a neutral interim candidate for PM and immediate elections.
Ciudadanos says that is necessary. “Sánchez is carrying out a coup on Spanish democracy from power”, said Arrimadas: “from the government of Spain, and Sánchez is no longer a Prime Minister. He is an apprentice dictator who we have to forcefully stop democratically”. As I write on Friday afternoon, Feijóo, the leader of the Popular Party, has not yet spoken on the motion of no confidence idea. He has criticized Sánchez's "authoritarian drift" and that "the government is quickly intensifying its attacks on our institutions and rule of law". He has so far just talked about announcing constitutional appeals, complaints to Europe and undoing whatever Sánchez does now if people vote for the PP next year, which is the line he has taken over the past few weeks.
The right doesn’t have the votes, though. If Sánchez, Podemos, and the Basque and Catalan regionalist separatists are determined to push all these changes through parliament, the liberals and conservatives and national populists do not have enough MPs to stop them, either the modification of the Criminal Code or the motion of no confidence. Vox, Ciudadanos and the PP, if they think they should do it and if Feijóo goes for it, will do well to make it clear what they think about everything in those parliamentary sessions in the run up to Christmas but they will not win the votes no matter how much they shout. Spaniards’ opinion of all this remains to be seen at the polls in 2023.
🔥 Understand the stories changing Spain better
📝 All the articles + 🔊 audio + 💬 Substack chat
💪 Guarantee this independent reporting & analysis