The next electoral cycle is approaching and the great matches begin to take positions. Except for surprise, the exit gun to the succession of elections will be given by Castilla y León and Andalucía. And that appointment, that of the Andalusian Board, already has national political implications. Not only for its possible result, but because the PSOE commitment to compete the lost bastion is one of the key figures of the central government. The Second Vice President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, will officially start this Sunday her pre -campaign as a candidate in a great act in Malaga and accompanied by Pedro Sánchez. And faces that role of electoral poster at the head of a ministry immersed fully in the great political affairs of the country.
The most immediate are the General State Budgets. Without sufficient parliamentary force to promote new accounts during the first two exercises of the legislature, Pedro Sánchez has committed his word that this time, at least, he will present that budget project regardless of having guaranteed or not the support. All ministries work since the return of summer with the political order of refining with the hacienda that proposal of accounts and having it ready for the coming weeks. An enormous work in which the department of María Jesús Montero will be turned during the remainder of September.
And all this without existing, for the moment, the slightest sign that this time the Catalan parties, mainly, but also other reluctant partners such as Podemos, are willing to underpin the second part of the legislature with the support of budgets. A lack of expectations that in the Montero team makes a parliamentary processing of the accounts that may end in Sonora political defeat can be suspended. A hard punishment for the Executive, in general, and for the candidate for Andalusia, in particular.
The messages that arrive from Catalonia to date are not precisely encouraging. “With Pedro Sánchez, of budgets, we have not spoken. They already know, we have not cheated them, we have told you many times, almost two years ago of the Brussels agreements. To negotiate budgets they must prove compliance with the current ones, we will not sit down to negotiate on the basis of a scam,” said the secretary general of Junts, Jordi Turull, Thursday in the SER chain.
From ERC, speech is similar. “There will be no budget negotiation as long as the financing model and that of fiscal collection are not resolved (by the Tax Agència of the Generalitat),” Junqueras said in a press conference after the return of summer.
The problem is that, in the opinion of some parliamentary partners of the Executive, the double role of María Jesús Montero as Minister of Finance and Candidate, with an eye already in her electoral career, hinders some negotiations. There are already allies of the PSOE that indicate, in fact, that the interlocution with Montero has been significantly affected from a few months to this part. Not due to lack of political will, but simply because the minister now has the agenda divided between her ministry and her order in Andalusia.
In that context, there is the conviction that there are no definitive steps or the financing model and in the collection model until Montero does not abandon the Executive. Because everyone assumes that the PSOE does not contemplate presenting the Board to a candidate who has just executed a Catalan fiscal singularity plan that would put the campaign to Juanma Moreno and the PP.
Therefore, explains ERC, Oriol Junqueras and Gabriel Rufián have decided to move card this week in a unilateral way. Republicans announced on Monday a law proposition to make the full management of IRPF from Catalunya possible, since they consider that the PSOE is slowing the necessary state legislative modification to facilitate the transfer of collection.
Without the support of the PSOE in Congress to this new law, which Hacienda discards, ERC ensures that they do not consider negotiating the general budgets of 2026. “As long as it does not advance in relevant issues such as the financing model and the fiscal collection model, there will be no budget negotiation,” Junqueras insist again.
ERC's text also opens the door for other autonomous communities to claim the collection of this tax that now corresponds to the State. “What we try is for the PSOE to move,” said Rufián, who considers that for now they keep the legislative changes that require this measure blocked.
However, Pedro Sánchez's initial plan is to hurry the deadlines with the relays in his Council of Ministers, full of territorial candidates for the next regional. And especially in the case of its first vice president, one of the president's greatest confidence both in the party and in the government.
Pre -campaign start in Malaga
In principle, the Andalusian elections must be held in the month of June. The official message of Moreno and his team, to date, is that the legislature will be hurried until the end, although from the president's environment the option to call the polls in March is not ruled out, something that in Genoa street would also see with good eyes to politically clothe Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, the president of Castilla y León, much weaker politically especially from the management of the fires. This possibility of advancing the elections in Andalusia at the beginning of spring, would force Juanma Moreno to officially summon them in January.
Asked for her departure from the Executive and her double facet as minister and candidate, Montero defended her continuity in the central government on Friday. “I do a good job at the head of the Ministry of Finance and the Vice Presidency for Andalusia. It is very important that the new budgets also have the Andalusian seal and contribute to the development of Andalusia from the Government of Spain in employment creation, in creation of wealth, in infrastructure, in investments. Any person in their health The vice president, who tried to settle the debate on a possible immediate exit.
For the Andalusian socialists, the act of this Sunday in Malaga, with María Jesús Montero wrapped up by Pedro Sánchez, is the first step of the long pre -campaign, also taking into account that this Saturday Alberto Núñez Feijóo will do the same with Juanma Moreno in the same city.
According to Montero's team in the Andalusian PSOE, the party has already put is already “campaign mode” as much as the candidate keeps her work agenda as the first vice president of the Government, as Minister of Finance and as Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE.
