Sánchez and Nogueras clash over the social shield: "Why are you copying the discourse of the right and the far-right?"

MadridThe social shield decree that will be voted on in Congress this Thursday hangs by a thread. In fact, at the moment nothing suggests that it will prosper because the Spanish executive does not have enough votes secured. Junts assures that it will vote against it, or at least that is what the party's spokesperson in Congress, Míriam Nogueras, has anticipated during Wednesday's control session of the Spanish government. "We will vote no," stated Nogueras, who reproached Pedro Sánchez for having included the anti-eviction measure in the decree again.

"Social shield yes, squatting no," Nogueras reiterated. When the decree first arrived in the Spanish lower house, it derailed due to the votes against it from PP, Vox, and Junts. The Junts members already warned that they would vote the same way again if the package of measures maintained the prohibition of executing some evictions when they affect vulnerable families, a measure that has been in force since the Covid-19 pandemic and which, on other occasions, Carles Puigdemont's party has accepted.

"What does [the anti-eviction measure] have to do with squatting [...] Why are you copying the discourse of the right and the far-right?" Sánchez asked Nogueras. In addition to this prohibition, the social shield includes the social electricity and thermal bonus, tax benefits for housing renovation, the revaluation of the Minimum Vital Income (IMV), among other things. "You have to decide whether you are on the side of those who open for business, or on the side of those who break down doors," Nogueras replied to Sánchez, whom she criticized for being more concerned with polls than with the streets. Junts has also lamented that they "Hispanicize" Catalan roads after prioritizing Castilian in some public road signs due to the new application of the regulation, as reported by Junts.

ERC enters the game

But ERC also slipped into Nogueras's interpellation to Sánchez. In fact, Junts and the Republicans usually have a particular face-to-face in Congress. The Junts spokesperson took advantage of her intervention to expose ERC by assuring that Pedro Sánchez's government has not fulfilled "anything" that they have promised them. "It seems that our ERC colleagues have already realized that [the PSOE] are not to be trusted [...] They don't have the singular financing, nor the IRPF that Salvador Illa promised, nor the transfer of Rodalies, nor anything that has been promised to them in the last eight years. They deceive with everything, even their unconditional partners," Nogueras snapped.

Once he finished reviewing the "unfulfilled promises," Sánchez defended the Republicans by reminding Nogueras that the control session was for the Spanish government, not for ERC: "I don't know if Mr. [Gabriel] Rufián wants to answer for the part corresponding to Esquerra Republicana."

Moncloa, the Catalan Government, and the Republicans are currently negotiating how to unblock Catalonia's ability to collect and manage the IRPF, as Illa had promised the Republicans within the framework of the investiture agreement. In fact, finding a consensus on this could be key to the approval of the Catalan budgets that the Generalitat intends to present this Friday. Meanwhile, ERC intends to register a bill in Congress to create a consortium for the control of State investments in Catalonia. "This government fulfills its promises, to Catalonia and to the parliamentary groups," Sánchez said during the control session.