Why, just eight months after his accession to the presidency, Pedro Sánchez was on the tightrope in Spain

Few political leaders have experienced as abrupt and contradictory changes as Pedro Sánchez over the last two years. At the beginning of 2017, it seemed finished. He was marginalized at the head of the Socialist Party (PSOE) after losing two consecutive elections against Mariano Rajoy, winning the worst results in the history of training.

But in May, surprisingly for many, wins internal elections through vote of young activist and becomes party president, defeat the old hierarchs. A year later, an unexpected window opened to reach La Moncloa.

The court's landmark decision in the Gürtel case proved the existence of a corrupt plot by which a group of companies bribed the highest leaders of the Popular Party (PP) in exchange for public contracts. The affair leaves Rajoy very exposed, who will never be able to detach himself from the scandal.

The government was in an extremely fragile position. While the PP was – and still is – the party with the most seats in Congress, it was far from the majority, and Rajoy had badumed thanks to the abstention of the PSOE in the vote of investiture.

Sanchez took advantage of this weakness and immediately proposed a motion of censure, a tool that exists in all parliamentary systems to dissolve governments that lose their legislative support. Within days, he formed a motley coalition with the radical left of Unidos Podemos, Basque nationalists and Catalan separatists. Their only coincidence was the desire to get Rajoy out and they were willing to support the socialist as a replacement.

June 1, 2018, the motion of censure against the PP won the support of 180 deputies – four more of the 176 needed – and Sanchez became president from the Spanish Government. He suspected that his government might be short because he had badumed with votes borrowed. But, in the event that the mandate is not completed by 2020, I expected at least to be able to delay as much as possible the call for elections and to choose the most appropriate time.

"The parliamentary alliance that overthrew Rajoy and replaced him with Sánchez was heterogeneous. From the beginning, it was clear that their survival depended on the ability of the PSOE to adapt to the preferences of the different parties, "he said. Infobae Rubén Ruiz Rufino, professor of comparative politics at King's College London.

Too soon, it became obvious that it was an impossible mission. Eight months after its formation, the government has entered a crisis that seems hopeless.. His attempt to approach Catalan leaders to approve public budgets provoked outrage from the nationalist sectors, who led a mbadive mobilization last Sunday.

As if that were not enough, the separatists demanded that he be not ready to accept. There was no pact and the coalition was broken. For the second time in Spanish democratic history, Parliament rejected the draft budget on Wednesday submitted by the government. Acorralado, Sanchez has called Friday for early elections, to be held on April 28.

The only time something similar happened was in 1996, when Felipe González was president. As now, the Catalan deputies, who were in what was Convergència i Unió, broke the legislative alliance and rejected the budgets.

Gonzalez before the elections and was beaten by José María Aznar, PP, which ended well with 14 uninterrupted years of socialist government. Sanchez will do everything possible to avoid this result, but it will not be easy.

Falling budgets

"Sanchez's serious problems lie in his parliamentary minority. Having only 84 deputies out of 350, the PSOE was forced to agree with all the parties available to approve the budgets. Podemos, Bildu and the Basque nationalist party were from the beginning favorable. The first for the social nature of the project and the last to access certain autonomous requests. The biggest challenge was to convince the Catalan, ERC and PdCat parties, which have a clearly independent base, to call a Scottish referendum with the support and coordination of the central state, "said political scientist Alejandro Tirado. Castro Carlos III University of Madrid, consulted by Infobae.

Partly by conviction and partly by necessity, Sánchez badumed the presidency with the commitment to find a political solution to the Catalan conflict. Unlike Rajoy, who had the power to polarize with the separatists, he had to negotiate with them, because his accompaniment had been indispensable for his investiture.

"Sánchez did not create this situation. He inherited the previous government, very incompetent and poisoning for some time.. To all this, we must add that the situation in Catalonia is very complex politically, because not all independence movements think the same thing in terms of strategies and objectives, and the non-independence party is not not homogeneous, "he said. Infobae Ferrán Martínez i Coma, Professor at the School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University of Queensland, Australia.

Sánchez took the first step to reconcile his positions in December, when he went to Barcelona to meeting with Quim Torra, president of the Generalitat. The meeting was cordial and both said goodbye and promised to continue the dialogue.

"The negotiations between the PSOE and the Catalan parties have been fundamental, because without their support, the budgets could not be approved," said Ruiz Rufino. This strong position of ERC and PdCat has been transformed into a strategy to link the process of budgets with a discussion on the territorial position of Catalonia in the rest of the country ".

The tension started to grow quickly. Torra said that he had submitted to the head of state a list of 21 points that summarized his main claims. Among other things, it included the recognition of the "right to self-determination of the people of Catalonia" and an "international mediation" facilitate equal bargaining ".

"In the beginning," said Tirado Castro, "one would think that after supporting Sánchez in the motion of censure, the Catalan parties would position themselves more favorably than against Rajoy, but that was not the case. . The claiming character of the independence formations has not been reduced and the claims are clear: without a referendum or progress towards independence, there is no budget. In addition, the fact that some Catalan leaders are in prison does not promote this relationship. "

The government announced earlier this month that it had agreed to include a "rapporteur" at the Catalans table, believing that it could well get its support for Congress. The euphemism served little, because everyone interpreted that it was a mediator, which could be interpreted as an acknowledgment that the dispute is between equals. Nationalists regarded this as unforgivable humiliation.

Many regional leaders of their own party have voiced their voices against the movement's approach to independence, fearing that it will affect them electorally. The leaders of the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox went much further: they called for a great mobilization to demand the resignation of Sánchez..

"The PSOE is very vulnerable to the national axis, which currently dominates the political agenda in Spain, while the other parties with whom it has to reach agreements have electoral bodies that clearly oscillate towards postulates more centralized or more decentralized, the PSOE has voters of all sensibilities. As a result, territorial discussion easily generates turbulence within the party.. Any movement in any direction can be costly, "said Ignacio Jurado, a professor of politics at Derwent College in York, in dialogue with Infobae.

Worse could not have come the move to Sanchez. Despite the price it paid, the inclusion of the mediator was not enough to convince the secessionists, who asked for much more than that to accompany budgets. When he realized this, he withdrew the proposal and ended the dialogues, hoping to abandon the opposition demonstration. But he neither.

Tens of thousands of people went to Plaza Colón in Madrid last Sunday to protest for the Spanish unity and against the socialist government. This was the prelude to the defeat suffered this Wednesday in Congress and the forced summoning of new general elections on April 28th. It will be the third in less than four years.

"Sanchez never had the political capital necessary to steer a complex scenario like the one that conceived the challenge of sovereignty in Catalonia.. It is a perfectly harmful mixture, in which the president had to face both an internal weakness of his party and a parliamentary weakness, counting only 84 parliamentarians, many of whom with little affection for him, "he said. Infobae Santiago Delgado Fernández, Professor of Political Science at the University of Granada.

Although the president is no longer able to achieve his initial goal of stretching the polls until 2020, he can still aspire to continue to La Moncloa. It will depend on the votes you get and, as it is ruled out that no party has the majority, its ability to form a new coalition of the government.

Prospects are not encouraging for socialism. According to the average number of investigations electocracy, The PSOE is the party with the highest intention to vote, but with barely 24%. The second is the PP, with 21%. Then come citizens (19.1%), Unidos Podemos (15.2%) and Vox (11.6%), the far-right party that continues to grow.

If these percentages were transferred to benches, Sánchez would have great difficulty to be re-elected. Although he retains the support of Unidos Podemos, who voted in favor of the budgets, he would be far from the 176 seats needed. With the current polarization would be unimaginable a grand coalition with the German PP, but also an agreement with Citizens, whose leader, Albert Rivera, expressed a strong rejection of Sanchez for his indulgence with the separatists.

The coalition that seems possible is the alliance of "three rights", as the president called the union between PP, Citizens and Vox.. This trio overthrew the PSOE of Andalusia after 36 years in the government and appointed Juan Manuel Moreno as president of the local board of directors.

"The socialist defeat in Andalusia has once again precipitated internal criticism and encouraged the right, who understood perfectly that, far from baduming a risk of competition between three different brands, the division facilitated the attainment of power. PPs and citizens understand that a similar scenario can occur during general elections", warned Delgado Fernández.