The game of cat and mouse over the Spanish budget seems to have reached an end. Esquerra Republicana (ERC) announced this Monday that it would present a wholesale amendment on Tuesday. And PDeCAT has made it known through Junts per Catalunya's spokesperson in the Catalan Parliament, Eduard Pujol, that it will do the same on Friday. There were no doubts, in principle, that this was going to be their position given the forcefulness president Puigdemont had spoken with, but PDeCAT was waiting to see if there would be some gesture from the Spanish government which wasn't just more of the same. In other words, more of nothing.
It's a curious story, this one about Pedro Sánchez's budget. The prime minister presented a plan in which the numbers didn't add up and which Europe was opposed to. But, as always, he'd got a trick. The objective wasn't so much to pass it, as its promoters knew from the very beginning that the independence movement had no leeway at all in the complete absence of moves by the Spanish government. They tried behind the scenes, without success, to put together a win-win: ERC and PDeCAT would support the Spanish budget and PSC the Catalan one. But it wasn't either realistic or viable.
How do you negotiate with political prisoners? What addition would be sufficient to withdraw the veto? Can a flagrant injustice like the referendum trial be ignored? Or if we talk about these days: How is the transfer to Madrid prisons so far in advance justified? Or the degrading treatment during the journey from Brians 2 to Soto del Real? Or the delay in giving them their computers to prepare for the trial? Or the absurd ban on having any item of yellow clothing?
Sánchez won't have a budget but nor is it a problem. He's already honing his rhetoric: he hasn't folded to the demands of the pro-independence side. It will make a virtue of necessity and compete with PP and Cs on their achievements in defence of the unity of Spain. And, who knows, he won't have a budget but in the Spains maybe they'll give him a few thousand votes. Is the end of the legislature approaching? I don't think so. Those who voted for Pedro Sánchez to be prime minister in the Congress have no intention of throwing him under the bus and playing Russian roulette, with the significant possibility the right-wing trio of PP, Cs and Vox would end up winning the match and that Pablo Casado or Albert Rivera could reach the Moncloa government palace.