Montero is leaving, but the personal income tax is staying (in Madrid, for now).

If you've been following the story of how the Government withdrew the budget proposal it had submitted to Parliament at the last minute, it won't surprise you that today we begin by emphasizing that The elections in Andalusia now have a date: May 17th.

The only person who could have made the decision, the Andalusian president (born in Barcelona), Juanma Moreno Bonilla, of the PP party, announced it yesterday. This means that Spanish Vice President María Jesús Montero doesn't have many cabinet meetings left, perhaps only today's, because she already said that as soon as the Andalusian Parliament is dissolved, She would leave Madrid and go to campaign in her homeland..

So now, the PSC and Esquerra know that from May 17th onwards, Catalonia can approve the budget without the interests of Montero and the PSOE (who have bad poll numbers in Andalusia) being able to interfere as decisively as they have done until now.

In fact, today we explained that the Government's timetable is to present the budget to Parliament again in a month or a month and a half, and have them approved before San Juan, June 24th.

Regarding the importance of the Montero factor, we will now explain a detail that occurred behind the scenes. First, it must be clear that it was Esquerra Republicana (ERC) that decided to link its support for the budget to a commitment from the Spanish government to transfer the management of personal income tax (IRPF) to the Generalitat (Catalan government), and that in the end, the PSC (Socialist Party of Catalonia) and ERC became so entrenched in their positions that they had to back down. But while Esquerra maintained its red line, Montero was on the other side. Part of her opposition stemmed from the resistance to the transfer among tax inspectors. The other part was that the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) believed that between the tax amnesty and the financing system, agreed upon precisely with Esquerra, the Catalan issue had already bled them dry electorally, and they didn't want to go any further, especially when it was precisely the Vice President for Economic Affairs who was supposed to be running an election campaign in which Catalonia would inevitably feature as surely as today is March 24th.

And the key detail is that, according to sources within Esquerra Republicana (ERC), on that Friday when Junqueras left Moncloa Palace after meeting with Sánchez and saw him feigning ignorance about the transfer of income tax revenue, he spent the return trip pondering how to react. Just when it seemed he had decided not to lose his temper, he received a call from María Jesús Montero, who had most likely just spoken with Sánchez. She had told him about the conversation with Junqueras regarding income tax, and Montero told the ERC president that she hadn't known "his people" had been talking with the Left, but that he wasn't talking "about his people" with the Left. And that's when Junqueras escalated the negotiations.

In short, after all this drama, it's clear there will be a budget. Late, but there will be one. However, Esquerra is looking for something to justify its support. They call it "gaining sovereignty," extracting a commitment from Illa's government that the Generalitat will do something it hasn't done before, or commit to certain national policies more to Esquerra's liking than the current socialist complacency in Catalonia. We'll see what becomes of these "sovereignty spaces."

Good morning.