The real political pulse of the day was not taken this Wednesday in the chamber, but a few meters away, in the Plaza de las Cortes. A fire drill forced the evacuation of Congress and pushed deputies, ministers, and advisors into an improvised gathering where, far from the face-to-face confrontations of the control session, interpretations and consequences about the UCO’s entry into Ferraz multiplied. The noise of the debate was paused for a few minutes, giving way to countless cross conversations that, between cigarette breaks and mobile searches, allowed some and others to reposition their pieces on a political board that continues to suffer shocks. The PSOE has activated a strategy of resistance and calm, the partners have begun to verbalize their limits, and the PP has opted for patient waiting, convinced that the socialist wear and tear will do the work by itself.
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The socialists have spent the morning between public disbelief and restraint. The leadership has tried to convey an image of institutional normality in the face of the symbolic impact of the UCO’s presence in Ferraz. “Calm,” repeated the PSOE spokesperson, Montse Mínguez, becoming one of the voices responsible for taking a stand. “There is no destruction of evidence here,” she assured, insisting that the party will cooperate with Justice and that “the Socialist Party is different” from the PP. The message, reiterated in interviews and conversations from early on, sought to reduce any reading of internal nervousness by repeating the idea that the legislature “continues.”
Among the investiture partners, the tone has been different and somewhat more explicit. Yolanda Díaz has verbalized a discomfort that had been brewing for weeks and crystallized in a phrase that has circulated strongly in Congress: “I do not like at all what I am seeing in Spanish politics.” Although she avoided a break in support, she clearly set a political threshold that is beginning to be repeated in discreet conversations among parliamentary groups: the red line of illegal financing.
The same one handled by ERC whose spokesperson, Gabriel Rufián, warned this Wednesday that if it were proven that there had been illegal financing of the PSOE, it would be a “red line” for his party and they would call for general elections so that “people decide.” The coalition has not entered a rupture phase, but rather a stage of stricter vigilance, where each new judicial development can have an immediate political cost.
Junts has avoided entering the dynamic of a possible government alternative. Miriam Nogueras directly challenged Pedro Sánchez to know if the government will wait “for a possible motion on the table” before reacting to corruption cases. However, she denied that they have made real moves in that direction. At the same time, she reproached the PP for trying to place the responsibility for the country’s political future on their shoulders, in a context in which she considers that “many red lines are being crossed, starting with a government that does not go through Parliament to be able to execute the policies decided there.”
This crisis will not be resolved by the PSOE because the problem is the PSOE
Ione Belarra
Sec. of org. of Podemos
Podemos has chosen to position itself outside any logic of recomposing the investiture bloc. Its national leader, Ione Belarra, has maintained that “this crisis will not be resolved by the PSOE because the problem is the PSOE,” and has defended that the solution will not come from institutional agreements, but from “people doing politics in the first person,” in a direct appeal to social mobilization like that generated around 15-M.
Along those lines, Belarra has rejected that the solution lies within bipartisanship by warning that “the solution to PSOE corruption cannot be PP corruption,” and has questioned the political delegation model in the socialists, considering that it has led to a deterioration of public policies in areas such as housing, health, or education.
Calm… anxiety is not part of our times
People’s Party
In the PP, on the contrary, the diagnosis has been of a process of progressive deterioration. Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s leadership has opted for a waiting strategy, without rushing moves, convinced that the government wears out due to the accumulation of fronts. In that framework, the national spokesperson Miguel Tellado has acted as the main parliamentary battering ram, raising the tone of the debate with a mix of irony and harshness that he maintained throughout the morning. Even when the plenary had already lost prominence due to the drill.
“Calm… anxiety is not part of our times,” summarized one of the popular leaders in an idea that was repeated as an internal slogan. In that line, the PP takes for granted that a possible motion of censure “does not serve” at this moment and that the scenario is still in an initial phase, “Pedraz’s debut,” referring to the judicialization of the case. “This has just begun,” they insisted, convinced that “they have years of courts ahead,” among recurring mentions to different judicial derivatives — “the brother, Begoña, and the UCO” — that frame a long-term scenario rather than immediate impact.
Absent from Congress, Santiago Abascal has set his position in a video spread on social networks. Vox leader Santiago Abascal understands that, after the UCO raid at Ferraz, the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero must be “detained and judged” and assures that those who defend them do so “only because they are part of the same mafia.”
