It was the turn of the Portuguese press at the joint appearance of the heads of government after the Spanish-Portuguese summit this Wednesday in Lanzarote. “There are those who say in Portugal that we have an overheated and tired socialist majority. Do you share that opinion?” a journalist asked Pedro Sánchez. The Spanish president, who is coming from barely getting through the toughest weeks in the coexistence of the coalition he leads and seeing the repeal of the gag law fall due to lack of parliamentary support, was speaking next to a man, Antònio Costa, who governs his country with 117 of 230 seats. He couldn’t help but smile. “What I can guarantee you is that I have a healthy envy of Prime Minister Costa’s parliamentary majority,” he replied.
The left crashes against the wall of the gag law
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His reaction sounded so sincere that he took it upon himself to qualify himself to avoid interpretations. “When I talk about consolidating a parliamentary majority like Antònio (Costa) has, I logically say it with our government partners who are represented here in Yolanda Díaz.” But everyone understood what he had meant after his confession of envy and after describing the numerical weakness that is the hallmark of his government. “In Spain, the parliamentary reality is much more fragmented,” he explained. “We, Vice President Yolanda knows it well, have just over 150 seats. So not only are we obliged to agree among ourselves, but then we have to go out into the parliamentary arena to agree with different groups in contexts as complex as the ones we live in”. Implicit in his response seemed to be the yearning of what he had just been described as a “reheated majority”, whatever that meant.
The parliamentary juggling of a coalition government that, moreover, systematically depends on around a dozen political groups in Congress contrasts with the overwhelming absolute majority of the Portuguese socialist prime minister. A mirror, that of Costa, in which Pedro Sánchez has dreamed of looking at himself for a long time.
In 2015, Sánchez had just landed (for the first time) in the PSOE general secretariat when the Portuguese progressive forces served as an example for the whole of a European left in low hours. Against all odds, Antònio Costa managed to get the PS to agree with the Communist Party, the Bloco de Esquerda and the Greens Ecologist Party to throw out the right. And he did it with a government agreement that did not imply that the forces to the left of the Socialists were part of a coalition Council of Ministers because they gave their support from outside. Just the mirror in which Pedro Sánchez tried to look at himself, without success, in 2019.
That Portuguese government agreement contemptuously baptized by the right as contraption (botch) lasted six years. It was broken when the Bloco de Esquerda and the Communist Party decided not to support the Costa Budgets, thus breaking the path of progressive collaboration. The result was a historic absolute majority of the Socialist Party and the corresponding collapse of the formations on which until then it had relied to govern and which the public pointed out as responsible for the divorce.
That scenario is, in fact, another mirror that the Spanish left does not lose sight of. “If Portugal taught us anything, it is that whoever breaks pays,” they argue on both sides of the coalition every time they ask about the possibility of a hasty break with the Executive branch due to clashes as virulent as the one between the PSOE and Podemos. during the ‘only yes is yes’ reform.
After the setback caused by the electoral repetition of 2019, in Moncloa they have assumed that the Government that leaves the polls in December of this year will once again be a coalition, whatever the weight of each of the blocks. And that what will be decided, therefore, is the ideology of that shared Executive: progressive or right-wing with support from the ultra-right. From that conviction and from the Portuguese experience that shows the punishment of the electorate for those who break government pacts, Sánchez strives to polish the legacy of his coalition despite the noise. “We have approved more than 200 laws, three budgets, a labor reform, the pension reform…” he highlighted in his appearance in Lanzarote.
Eleven agreements at the Lanzarote summit
From Podemos, where the tone of criticism of their partner has risen exponentially in recent weeks, they also publicly rule out any breakup scenario from that Portuguese thesis that whoever breaks is who ends up paying for it. “The coalition is not in danger,” said Irene Montero in Congress just after the political crisis of ‘only yes is yes’ during which her party came to resemble the positions of the PSOE on equality with those of PP and Vox .
Inside the government, everyone admits that this closing of ranks by one and the other has a lot to do with staging. What’s more, neither in the PSOE nor in some sectors of United We Can see it with such bad eyes that it is the one in front who, if necessary, decides to break. “For our part, of course, it will not be. Now, if they despise us so much, let them assume consistency and get out if they want to ”, a minister from the socialist wing of the Executive says in private. A few months ago, the founder and trusted person of the leaders of Podemos, Juan Carlos Monedero, confessed in a public act: “It is much better that they throw us out than that we leave.”
During the 34th Spanish-Portuguese summit, which was attended by nine Spanish ministers, eleven bilateral agreements were signed in the judicial, labor, health, educational and university fields. Shared successes were also claimed, such as the “Iberian solution” to limit the price of gas that both Costa and Sánchez intend to use to promote a comprehensive reform of the electricity market. And it became clear that, in addition to being a colleague and an ally, the Portuguese Prime Minister is above all a mirror for Pedro Sánchez. “Antònio is a European socialist reference. If I have something to say about him, it is that I see him not in shape but in very good shape,” said the president. “You have to come to be a commentator in Portugal,” Costa thanked him.