Podemos plants Sánchez while the rest of the partners give him air

BarcelonaPodemos is the first of Pedro Sánchez's partners to say enough over the Cerdán case, given that the rest of the allies of the plurinational majority, for now, are giving the Spanish government leeway. The purple party distanced itself from the coalition government on Monday and will not participate in the round of contacts the Spanish president will make with the groups that support him to calm them down in the face of the scandal. In a press conference, Podemos's organizational secretary, Pablo Fernández, asserted that Sánchez "does not currently have the legitimacy to lead a progressive government in Spain" and that his party will not contribute to "giving a facelift" to the PSOE in the face of the scheme of contract awards in exchange for kickbacks allegedly orchestrated by former organizational secretary Santos Cerdán. Podemos thus further distances itself from the PSOE and Sumar, which, from the other side of the Cabinet, demanded this Monday that the PSOE implement a package of "democratic regeneration" measures to respond to the case. The two flagship measures of Sumar, announced by Vice President Yolanda Díaz, are to end the capacity restrictions and to ban corrupt companies from public works bidding processes "forever."

The four Podemos deputies are the only ones who have slammed the door on the president. The plurinational majority in Congress continues to wait and see what steps the Spanish president will take to try to get rid of the shadow of corruption that the Cerdán case casts over the executive. While Carles Puigdemont's party remains silent, Esquerra (Republican Left) demanded this Monday that the PSOE go to the end "no matter who falls" and "clean up" the plot. Like Sumar, the Republicans also demand that the companies that have provided or offered to engage in public tenders and they also demand an audit of all the ministries implicated in the alleged plot.

However, for now, the Republicans are not considering forcing the end of the Spanish legislature, which the Spanish president still maintains he wants to run until 2027. The argument is that this does not depend "exclusively" on ERC, but also on the other partners, who for the moment do not seem to be pursuing that path. Both Junts and Esquerra will meet with the Spanish president this Tuesday at the Moncloa Palace: Sánchez will receive Míriam Nogueras in the morning, and in the afternoon he will meet with Gabriel Rufián. In a press conference, ERC spokesperson Isaac Albert assured that the PSOE leader has not raised a vote of confidence with them as a way to take the reins of the legislature—an initiative that the president has also publicly ruled out. On the other hand, he hinted that contacts had already taken place this weekend between the president of the ERC party, Oriol Junqueras, and Sánchez.

Aside from the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), the Republicans held talks over the weekend with Junts (Junts) and the BNG (Basque Nationalist Party) to analyze the political scenarios that arise from now on. As Albert explained, the ERC (Basque Nationalist Party) will continue to push to advance its political agenda, with the special financing and the transfer of commuter rail at the top of the list of pending issues. Even so, the spokesperson wanted to issue a warning regarding the Cerdán case: "It's a serious gap, and for us, everything related to corruption is a red line." "We will make decisions whenever we see our political agenda moving forward, but corruption is an element that makes everything much more complicated," he emphasized. Along the same lines, the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) warned Sánchez that they will be "vigilant" regarding possible new information about the case, which they ask to be addressed with "transparency."

Díaz claims that Sumar is "clean"

Faced with the crisis that threatens to greatly complicate the future of the coalition government, Yolanda Díaz met with Sánchez this Monday afternoon to discuss the state of relations with the Socialists. Díaz emerged only with Sánchez's commitment to convene a meeting of the coalition agreement monitoring committee to study the "strong" measures against the case that Sumar is requesting, starting with the elimination of special jurisdictions—enshrined in the Constitution—and the veto of corrupt companies in public tenders. For Sumar, the explanations that the PSOE leader has given so far are "insufficient."

At a press conference, the vice president and Minister of Labor expressed her anger at the alleged corruption scheme, a scourge that she believes must be "eradicated" from the very beginning to avoid arriving "fearfully" at the 2027 elections. She also took the opportunity to distance herself from the PSOE, which defends corruption in their respective parties. "While some of us were giving our all with the ERTOs, some were stealing right next door. Or allegedly stealing," she maintained. She was referring to the shady dealings perpetrated by former minister José Luis Ábalos and his former advisor Koldo García during the pandemic. While suspicions of alleged irregular financing hover over the PSOE, from Compromís, they go a step further and demand that the PSOE "not manage public works" within the Spanish government, however, they have already ruled out creating a government crisis to redistribute portfolios within the executive.

Meanwhile, in Catalonia, the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) has distanced itself from the crisis of the Spanish Socialists and believes it does not affect Salvador Illa's government "in any way," said Lluïsa Moret, the party's second-in-command and spokesperson, in a press conference on Monday. The Catalan Socialists have closed ranks with Sánchez's response to the Cerdán case since the scandal erupted with the UCO report. This Monday, the president of the Generalitat (Catalan government), Salvador Illa, who expressed his "full confidence" in the PSOE leader, and the mayor of Barcelona, ​​Jaume Collboni, did so again. However, the mayor of the Catalan capital acknowledged the cracks that the Cerdán case could open: "We are putting at stake the work of a government that in Catalonia we experience as a recovery of coexistence," he said at a conference at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid.