Miriam Nogueras, Junts spokesperson in the Congress—where the fugitive Puigdemont’s party maintains seven decisive deputies, without whom the investiture majority falls into a minority with 172 out of 350 deputies—announced yesterday that her party will not vote with the Government again after the half-dozen laws they have already agreed upon pass through Parliament.
She will not vote in favor of either the 2026 Budgets (Spain continues to extend the 2023 budgets, corresponding to a previous legislature), the Bolaños Law (Justice reform), or the Begoña Law (to end popular prosecution in trials)… “The legislature is blocked” because “the Government of the Spanish State has lost its legislative capacity,” she concluded.
It has been only a week since the 6,000 Junts militants ratified the party’s executive agreement to break with Sánchez, and Nogueras wanted to stage this final point with a press conference, surrounded by Junts deputies in Congress.
Different members of the Government, however, have not acknowledged the situation and several ministers insist that the legislature will continue until 2027, and that they will continue to govern “with an outstretched hand,” “negotiating”… Not in vain, months ago the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, publicly declared that he was willing to govern “without the help of the legislature.” An unusual declaration in a parliamentary democracy but one that Sánchez justifies as a way to stop the right and the far-right, and the “reactionary wave” that, he admitted, would win the elections if they were called.
Junts’ announcement comes hours after it was revealed that the National Court will investigate the accounts of the PSOE, whose latest organization secretary is in jail awaiting trial, just as the previous one is awaiting trial; with Sánchez’s wife one step away from the dock for five crimes resulting from alleged “influence peddling,” with the president’s brother also on the verge of a trial, while the Attorney General awaits a sentence for the suspicion that he leaked personal data of the partner of a political rival of the president… And while the Civil Guard’s investigations continue to implicate more ministers in a corrupt scheme for the purchase of masks and antigen tests during the Covid era.
