Spanish Government and opposition meet without reaching any agreement

USPA NEWS - Government and opposition of Spain met again this Monday, but without agreement and with very distant positions. The Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez received the president of the Conservative Popular Party, Pablo Casado, in the Moncloa Palace, but the ninety minutes of the interview did not serve to gain popular support for government policies. In the air are the state budgets and renovations such as the General Council of the Judiciary or the Council of public radio-television.

There was only an approach on issues such as pension reform and education, areas in which both leaders were willing to negotiate. However, the meeting between Sánchez and Casado was, as they say in Spain, a "dialogue of the deaf", a meeting in which both spoke of their views but there was no willingness to understand or agree on either side. So much is the distance that separates the Spanish Prime Minister from the leader of the conservative opposition, that the Government accused the Popular Party of continuing “installed in its blocking strategy“ and the conservatives accused the Government of boycotting them and not picking up any of their approaches.

Approaches that respond to the needs that, according to the Popular Party, Spain has. The conservative leader held out his hand to the Prime Minister with “constructive spirit“ to reach great state pacts “from the centrality“. That is, if the Government renounces the support provided by the extreme left and the Catalan and Basque independence workers. Casado presented to the Prime Minister a decalogue of possible reforms that need the agreement of the two main parties of the Spanish parliamentary arch: renew the financing of the regions, underpin the pension system and agree on budgets, in economic matters; the renewal of Justice, in the political sphere, and agreements in education and in defense of children, in the social field. Agreements that, according to the opposition leader, Pablo Casado, would give for "a legislature or two."

But the support of conservatives would not be free. In return, the Popular Party asks that the sentence that disables the president of the regional government of Catalonia, Quim Torra, be fulfilled; that the bilateral negotiating table between the Government of Spain and the regional government of Catalonia be called off; that justice be depoliticized; that they give up raising taxes; that the labor reform that, according to the IMF, has had positive effects on employment be maintained; that the Criminal Code be renounced to benefit the convicted independents, and that the legitimacy of the president in charge of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, be recognized, among other matters.

"The ball is on the roof of Sánchez: or divide, or seek a commitment to strengthen what unites us," said the president of the Popular Party after the meeting. Pablo Casado added that "the news is not that a party blocks the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary" but that the PSOE sits at the table with the independentistas who "say they would do it again." The conservatives deny that they are blocking the Government and the Government accuses them of not having understood the outcome of the elections, which gave power to the Socialists.

"They are blocking the functioning of the institutions of other powers of the State," said the spokeswoman of the Government and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, and warned that "the obstructionist attitude only leads to melancholy." The government spokeswoman also criticized the Popular Party demanding the breaking of bridges with the independence authorities of Catalonia: "proposes that we do not dialogue without providing any solution."