Sánchez rules out elections despite Junts' blockade: "We are working to deliver"

BarcelonaSpanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has seen his term become even more complicated this week. Together, they have announced that It will block about fifty pending laws as a result of his break with the PSOE and, on the legal front, The National Court has agreed to investigate the cash payments Former minister José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García were also removed from office at the request of the Supreme Court. However, none of this has led the head of the executive branch to consider dissolving Parliament and calling general elections. "We are not in that situation. Right now, we are fulfilling our investiture agreement," he said in an interview with The Country This Sunday. Together, they criticize him for failing to uphold the agreements regarding the official status of Catalan in Europe and the implementation of the amnesty, but the Spanish president maintains that they are "working" to fulfill the agreements, both those that depend on the central government and those that do not. This is the case with the official status of Catalan, which requires the unanimity of all member states of the European Union. On this matter, Sánchez recalled that the Spanish government has opened a "dialogue process with the German government," which until now has been aligned with the European People's Party in its veto of the official status of co-official languages in Europe. Sánchez also reiterated a "clear, unequivocal, and total" commitment to achieving the "full normalization of the political situation" in Catalonia. "This government opted for pardons and the amnesty law. We are recognizing political actors who, after 2017, due to mistakes made by others and by themselves, found themselves outside the political arena," he stated, even though the Moncloa Palace has not set a date for a possible meeting with former president Carles Puigdemont. Juntos, however, has already stopped demanding this meeting and reiterates that it will not sit down with the PSOE again. whom he accuses of having "ruined" the legislatureIn fact, this very Sunday, Puigdemont retorted to Sánchez that it is in Madrid where the "levers of power" are located that must be pulled to achieve their goals, and he lamented that the focus of the State's governance is placed on Junts. "We have never gone to Madrid to make friends or to pretend to be such nice Catalans," he said. that-don't-look-Catalan"We have gone to defend national interests, in all areas: from the economic to the linguistic, the social or the sporting," he wrote in X.

But how does Sánchez hope to complete his term without the support of the regional parliament? The Spanish president has extended an olive branch to the People's Party (PP) to "forge major agreements"—for example, on climate change—but He admitted that the Popular Party's shift towards positions closer to the far right makes it more difficult."Precisely in the Valencian Community, which was a victim of the climate emergency, what we are seeing is that Feijóo is leaving the solution in the hands of Abascal, who is a climate change denier," he lamented. This Sunday, the Vox leader demanded that the new president of the Valencian Generalitat uphold the commitments that Mazón signed: the rejection of the European Green Deal and "mass immigration," he said in an interview. The Vanguard. "We are never afraid of going to elections," he added, in case the negotiations don't come to fruition.

Court cases

The National Court's investigation into cash payments made by the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) adds to the ongoing Supreme Court investigation into the Ábalos case, as well as the trial of the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz. Sánchez reiterated his conviction of the Attorney General's innocence: "And, after what we've heard this week, even more so," he said, referring to the initial sessions of the trial, in which the prosecution denied orchestrating a conspiracy to undermine Isabel Díaz Ayuso. thesis that was put into circulation by the team of the Madrid journalist. Sánchez expressed his conviction that his wife, Begoña Gómez, and his brother, David Sánchez, are also innocent and that he will ultimately prove it.

Just as he did when the UCO report uncovering the corruption scheme in Ábalos's Ministry of Transport was made public, Sánchez also reiterated that the PSOE's financing is legal: "I can guarantee the public that there has been no irregular financing," he stated. Furthermore, he reiterated his confidence in the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, whom businessman Víctor de Aldama accuses of being involved in the scheme. The minister and former president of the Canary Islands He has already announced a lawsuit against Aldama for trying to implicate him in the illegal commissions scheme.