The Minister for Social Rights, Ione Belarra, has been elected as the new secretary general of Podemos, replacing Pablo Iglesias, with 88.69 percent of the votes cast in the party’s primaries. Of the 139,000 registered Podemos members with the right to vote in the IV Citizens’ Assembly held in Alcorcón (Madrid), 53,443 took part in the vote, of whom 45,753 opted for Belarra. Belarra competed with two other aspirants for…
On the rights and freedoms of all Spaniards, on whether or not they can leave their homes, until what time, with how many people… On all of this, let the Supreme Court decide. On the 12 prisoners of the ‘procés’ who, from prison, support the Government, on whether they enter or leave, how and when… The Supreme Court can say mass, and the Government, in other words Sánchez, will decide.
Fernando González Urbaneja | The Sánchez government has given changing, confusing, changing and poorly explained responses, always tinged with a colossal self-esteem summed up in the boast that others are watching us and copying us… we are among the best… However, objective data and international statistics do not support this belief; on the contrary, Spanish performance is among the least fortunate.
The Secretary General of the OECD, Ángel Gurría, yesterday presented the “Economic Survey of Spain 2021” together with the Vice-President for Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño. The document is an amendment to the labour policy proposed by the Spanish government in its entirety. It warns of the high impact of the coronavirus crisis on the Spanish economy and rejects a tax hike until the economic recovery is consolidated. It also asks…
Within the PSOE itself, critical voices are growing against the pardons that the government intends to grant to the Catalan coup plotters to ensure its continuity. The president of the Junta de Extremadura, the socialist Guillermo Fernández Vara, explained on Wednesday that “it is clear” that “those who do not want to be pardoned should not be pardoned, since they do not respect or believe in the laws that make…
The fact that Pedro Sánchez needs the support of ERC (the party of many of the Catalan politicians imprisoned for sedition) to stay in government, prevents the Prime Minister’s argument from being heeded: “Revenge is not a constitutional value,” he says. The 12 imprisoned pro-independence politicians have refused to request a pardon and have publicly reiterated they would be willing to call an illegal referendum like the one on October,…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The second (Nadia Calviño) and third (Yolanda Díaz) vice-presidents of the Spanish government have a hard time putting up with each other; they hide it, but sometimes they betray each other. A gesture, a comment, a confidence… and the dissimulation vanishes. It happened yesterday in Parliament, over the “reversal of the labour reform” but it is well known to the usual interlocutors of the two vice-presidents….
Nick Ottens (Atlantic Sentinel) | Catalonia’s leading pro-independence parties have reached an agreement to install Pere Aragonès as regional president. Aragonés has been acting president since September, when Quim Torra of the center-right Together for Catalonia (Junts) was forced to step down. Aragonès’ Republican Left won the election in February. The agreement comes after three months of negotiations during which the Republicans raised the possibility of forming a minority government…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The spring promised to be a prosperous one for the socialists after the relative triumph in the Catalan elections, which held out the possibility of a tripartite government (on the left); the ousting of the Partido Popular in some autonomous communities in collusion with Ciudadanos, which, by the way, distanced itself from the PP; the vaccination campaign that would put an end to the pandemic; and…
Fernando González Urbaneja | If it is not easy to give birth to a party, burying it with dignity can be just as complicated… or more so. Ciudadanos was an exciting political project born in Barcelona as a reaction to (unconfessed pro-independence) nationalism and the connivance of the constitutionalist parties, PSC and PP. Ciudadanos was the other, cleaner way (without history). It was accepted in Catalonia and exported the model…