The Andalusian Parliament, with its absolute majority of the People’s Party, has added fuel to the boilers of the legislative calendar, which is witnessing, in the final stage of the Legislative Council, an extraordinary acceleration. Since the last period of sessions began last September, the Chamber’s Council has urgently processed 15 draft laws, with the aim of approving them before President Juan Manuel Moreno calls regional elections for the spring of 2026.
In parallel, the absolute majority of the PP – with Vox abstaining – objected to this fast-tracking of the Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP) that reached the Chamber with the signature of 60,000 citizens, aiming to “restore the quality of the health system in Andalusia” and “reverse the privatization model” of the Moreno government.
It has only been six days since the people, in this same Parliament, supported taking into account the popular initiative championed by Marias Blancas, the group that mobilized the largest number of people in the streets against the management of public health by the junta. The leftist opposition has collectively supported the Independent Workers’ Party, which Moreno has criticized for the breast cancer screening crisis, the abuse of contracts with private clinics – which two Andalusian courts are investigating – and the “strategy of gradual privatization, which consists of letting the public system weaken little by little.”
In the face of such an accumulation of criticism, a PP vote of opposition was expected, but Moreno’s party took a tactical turn and agreed to consider the matter, allowing the parliamentary debate to begin. And so it was. He started walking, but did not run away, like the rest of the bills that the Andalusian government has sent to Parliament since September, all of them urgently.
The chamber’s board, which met on Tuesday, approved using the fast track to address the Future Science, Technology and Innovation Act, and two bills to create two professional colleges: the College of Educational Psychology and the College of Private Investigators. These three projects followed the accelerated steps of other bills that had already entered Parliament: the Organic Production Project; The person who will create environmental factors; That the third sector. The Housing Law (finally approved on Tuesday, with a single PP vote); Which will organize production spaces to enhance industry; Future University Law; Future Heritage Act; Environmental management project; The Montes Montes Project and the Cultural Heritage Project (on the bench, the future Sustainable Tourism Law can still be added).
But at the same meeting, the PP used its absolute majority to remove the health-related Independent Workers Party from emergency measures, at the request of the PSOE, Coalition for Andalusia and the mixed group Adelante Andalucía. The rest of the laws will shorten parliamentary deadlines by half, so they can be approved within three months, before Moreno dissolves the chamber and calls elections. The popular initiative, promoted by Marías Blancas, will follow the normal process and is expected to back down before it sees the light of day in this legislature, as the PP’s rivals predicted in last week’s debate.
The premise of seeing the Andalusian Parliament questioning the health management model of the Moreno government with the harsh conditions proposed by the Independent Action Party was illusory. The initiative questions the transfer of funds to private health care, through the referral of thousands of patients, and proposes restrictive agreements with these hospitals and clinics, such that within a period of five years there will be none left, and proposes to restore the drug auction, which the People’s Republic canceled as soon as it arrived at the Palace of San Telmo, the headquarters of the Council.
The same popular initiative was presented, almost verbatim, in hundreds of municipal councils in Andalusia, where it was largely rejected by the PP.
Marías Blancas has already requested urgent treatment, although this initiative does not depend on the proposed group, but must be registered by at least two parliamentary groups or 11 deputies. The association enjoyed the complicity of the left, but it collided with the wall of the People’s Party’s absolute majority.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, White Marias noted that it was this group, and other social movements, that forced Moreno’s government to “repeal the decree on the privatization of primary care, and last Wednesday, for the first time, a bill that came from the people was approved that introduces an amendment to the entire current health policy of this government, without a vote against it.”
The PP’s health spokeswoman, Beatriz Jurado, confirmed a week ago in that debate that the ILP was “a great opportunity to open the door to dialogue, thanks to our vote” and explained that there were “common points” with some of its proposals. “We are lending our positive voice to start the process of reforming our health legislation.”
This Tuesday, in the final debate to approve the housing law — as well as in the debates on all of the chamber’s other bills — all left-wing spokesmen insulted the chamber that “approves bills like hotcakes,” but is “making a fool of itself” with a grassroots initiative they supported last week, to now remove it from emergency processing so it won’t be voted on in the rest of the Legislature.