2023-10-19 16:35:13
The Senate will be Sánchez’s counterweight if he manages to form a Government and today’s debate is proof of this. The Popular Party has an absolute majority both in the Upper House and in the presidency of autonomous communities, and today the PP has brought out those pressure tools by uniting all of them in the territorial chamber to debate amnesty and the financing system of the autonomies.
Despite the large presence of PP presidents, the one who started this debate was the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, who defended the amnesty – he was the only one – and concluded his ten-minute speech in Catalan by saying that Catalonia “will vote in a referendum” and that it is absolutely “convinced.”
The presidents of Galicia and Andalusia, Alfonso Rueda and Juanma Moreno, have responded to this. The president of Galicia has insisted that the equality of Spaniards “cannot be put up for auction.” For his part, Moreno Bonilla has indicated that giving in to the independence demands would be “unforgivable.”
For Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the presence of the Catalan president is due to the interest of confronting Puigdemont’s party and she has described his intervention as that of the “spokesperson of the socialist group.”
On the part of the PSOE, none of its three barons have attended. María Chivite, Adrián Barbón and Emiliano García-Page have not been present in the Senate. The president of Asturias has excused his presence because of the Princess of Asturias awards, although he has also attacked the PP for the “lack of respect” in the way in which they have been convened and has labeled the day of debate as a “performance” which makes the Upper House a “Genoa branch”.
Regional financing, another of the main issues
In addition to the political, in the debate there has also been a lot of talk about the economic, specifically the regional financing system. On this point the PP has also had a practically unanimous position. Many of the regional presidents have referred to the fact that their communities are “underfinanced.” Gonzalo Capellán, President of La Rioja, has denounced the “historic” deficit suffered by his community, the president of Cantabria María José Sáenz de Buruaga the declines in transportation in her region and Carlos Mazón and Fernando López Miras have emphasized that they are the two autonomous communities (Valencian Community and Murcia region, respectively) most affected by the current financing system.
Azcón puts an emotional touch in the debate
In the midst of the reproaches for the independence demands and the claims of all the regional leaders to the central Government, the president of Aragon Jorge Azcón has ended his intervention with an emotional message of support for the former Aragonese socialist president and now senator of the PSOE, Javier Lambán . “Before finishing my speech, I want to remember Javier Lambán, who cannot be here,” Azcón concluded. Javier Lambán underwent surgery a few days ago to undergo cancer surgery due to the colon cancer that he suffers from.
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