Would a regional energy rebellion in Spain benefit the main parties in the run up to a general election?
"We will not allow any regional government to mutiny", the Finance Minister warned on Tuesday.
Madrid is taking the socialist-communist Spanish government's implementation of the new European energy plan to the Constitutional Court, the conservative First Minister, Isabel Ayuso, has announced. "Tomorrow night", she wrote on Monday evening, referring to yesterday when Spanish politics exploded with polarised rage because of the King and the Colombian sword: "the only blacked-out shop windows in Europe will be those in Spain. This decree is anti-business, anti-tourism and anti-safety". Her regional government has published a list of 10 points from the new plan that they believe are unconstitutional: "Madrid will be the only European capital that has to black out its shop windows at 10 p.m.".
Madrid says the national government cannot "invade regional power" because this is not a gas supply problem, that "we are faced with a European agreement that is not obligatory", that closing doors to save energy is the opposite of opening them to reduce Covid infections, that forcing businesses to put up explanatory posters does not save energy, that the decree doesn't allow for the use of alternative energy sources, that switching off the lights at 10 p.m. "collides directly with the regional Business Opening Hours Freedom Act", that the law hurts tourism, that the duration of the European plan does not coincide with the duration of the Spanish government's plan and that there might be legal problems with the fines, just like there were with the Covid fines.
"We will not allow any regional government to mutiny", warned the Finance Minister, María Jesús Montero, on Tuesday: "we all know that path, unfortunately it wasn't very long ago, and it ended badly", she said, in reference to the central government taking over Puigdemont's regional government when he declared the independence of Catalonia in 2017: "you must comply with the law". Articles have already appeared in the press wondering if the Article 155 process might be applied to Ayuso's regional government in Madrid for refusing to apply the new energy decree.
"The important thing is not to sanction, but to channel that will to do their part for the collective effort", said the Energy Minister yesterday in an interview with Cadena SER: "I dont' think anyone is going to be handing out fines straight away, we will have to analyse why they are not complying". Nationally, the Popular Party is demanding the government send them the techincal reports they used to put together their energy plan and that Sánchez cancel his holidays and call a full meeting of regional first ministers. The Justice Minister, Pilar Llop, has said this morning, referring to the European position, that "we are in a situation of energy war" with Putin and that PP leader Feijóo should bring order to his own house: "we are now listening to contrary statements from other leaders in his party [...] I am really starting to miss Mr. Casado becuase he stood up to Ms. Díaz Ayuso".
Apart from Catalonia with Puigdemont, the only other time the regional government intervention process was even begun was in 1989 with the regional administration in the Canary Islands...for refusing to implement a European tax measure. We are still far from this extreme and any appeal to the Constitutional Court would at a minimum take several months to process, as would the long hypothetical political road to any application of Article 155 against Ayuso. Even if it doesn't in the end come to that, we are going in to the part of the political cycle in Spain that leads us to the next general election, with a near certainty of a worsening economic situation right up to voting day because of the global economic outlook. So might all of the politicians decide it would be interesting to activate those processes step-by-step anyway, for show, to create an ideological, media-friendly election conflict that would allow them all to take a defiant stand and mobilise their electorates?
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