Given its inability to execute the General State Budgets for 2026, the Government endeavored to establish a narrative to make light of the absence of public accounts, arguing that it can govern perfectly with extensions for more than two years.
However, Pedro Sanches surprised at the beginning of his political journey by confirming his intention to present the PGE bill for next year. And this commitment was reaffirmed several times.
Why would Sánchez go to the trouble of taking the proposal to Congress if he knows in advance that he does not have the votes to approve the parliamentary vote?
After all, the president could have repeated the modus operandi of the previous two years: they act out their vocation to present them, but finally give up on the sterile process and prolong those of the previous year.
So that If the Government perseveres in its efforts this time, it can only be due to some compelling reason. And it is the break with Junts, made official this Thursday, that clarifies the logic underlying this movement.
Miriam Nogueras finalized the announcement with which two weeks ago Carles Puigdemont decreed that his party officially enter the opposition, given the failure to comply with the Brussels Agreements.
This Thursday, Nogueras clarified that Junts will veto all laws, those in progress and future ones, that the Executive takes to Congress, forcing the Legislative to “be blocked”.
Specifically, Nogueras decided that Junts will not support hypothetical budgets for 2026. And, in this way, the project that Sánchez has committed to presenting is doomed to failure.
But with this controlled separation, Sánchez gets the perfect pretext to advance in the elections.
It is not hidden from anyone that in recent months evidence has multiplied to suggest that Sánchez could be thinking about dissolving the Cortes.
Firstly, the PSOE’s increasing difficulty in approving its legislative initiatives in Congress. Added to this is the opening of a judicial investigation into cash payments from the PSOE to concussions. Sánchez’s remaining partners (including Sumar) announced that, in the context of the party’s irregular financing, they would stop supporting the Government.
Faced with this paralysis, the PSOE has wanted to pressure the reaction of its supporters through successive polling balloons, with a view to a possible electoral breakthrough. And this explains the propaganda campaigns on topics that in principle mobilize the left, such as the war in Gaza, abortion or, now, the commemoration of the death of Franco.
On the other hand, Government is guaranteeing membership of social groups dependent on the treasurywho represent a large part of its electoral base.
And so, in addition to guaranteeing the revaluation of pensions, the Government proposed this Wednesday to the unions a multi-year pact with salary increases so that public employees do not lose purchasing power.
In this context, the break with Junts (which certainly figured in the Government’s projections) put the icing on the cake of the legislature’s amortization.
But the announced failure of the Budgets It gives Sánchez the alibi he needed to resort to his plan B, which is to encourage the elections.
This, even after No Junts resounding, Moncloa confirmed to this newspaper in its decision to present the budget project means that Sánchez sees this maneuver as a mere pre-electoral act.
Because he supports the script with which he can justify going to the polls: Junts, who has already voted a hundred times in Congress alongside the PP and Vox, has definitively joined the conservative ranks.
And, therefore, there is no other alternative than to go to the polls to free Budgets of unprecedented social ambition, necessary to accompany the good progress of the economy of which the Government can be proud, from the blockade of the right.
A project that, furthermore, not to go beyond a declaration of electoral intentions, is not limited by the material limitations imposed by accounting realismand therefore can accommodate all the gifts you want.
We should not expect this strategy to lead to immediate elections. But it opens the way for Sánchez to transform the unborn Budget into the core of his future electoral program, and the frustrated act of its presentation in the first pre-campaign act.
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