There was a moment, between the end of last year and the beginning of this, in which the PSOE He thought that United We Can wanted to break. The socialist wing of the Government saw Ione Belarra and Irene Montero wanting to leave the coalition. But this alleged intention, if it came to exist, has come to nothing. The closest collaborators of the president, Pedro Sánchez, They believe that the heads of Social Affairs and Equality took a step back when checking that the rest of the ministers in their area (Yolanda Diaz, Alberto Garzon and Joan Subirats) did not intend to follow them.
“There will be no rupture”, they insist in Moncloa, where they are trying to turn the page on the crisis of the ‘only yes is yes’ law, after the approval in Congress last Thursday of the PSOE proposal with the support of the PP and the vote against United We Can, and accepts the continuous criticism of its minority partner almost as if they did not exist. Basically, they ignore each other in public, focused as the socialists are on the ideological combat with the PP before the electoral cycle of this year, with regional and municipal on May 28 and general, in principle, in December. But the deteriorated relationship between the two formations that make up the Government has two new and important tests ahead of it: the family and parity laws.
The first norm, except for surprise, will be approved by Congress in this legislature, since it will be processed by the urgent procedure, which allows cut deadlines in half ordinary. The entry into force of the second before the general is not guaranteed. But both initiatives share two circumstances: they address issues especially sensitive for the purple ones, with matters that depend on the departments run by Belarra and Montero, and have already caused frictions between the partners of the coalition, without in any case reaching the open confrontation and schism of ‘only yes is yes’.
three new permissions
The family law is one of the star initiatives of the Ministry of Social Affairs. In the absence of it being able to be modified as it passes through Congress and the Senate brings with it important new features: it includes three new permits for the care of relatives or cohabitants, it equates families single parent who have two children to the many and recognizes the different types of units, such as adoptive, multiple, foster, reconstituted, LGTBI or with a member with a disability.
However, when it was approved in the second round by the Government, at the end of last month, in the midst of a clash over the ‘only yes is yes’, Moncloa did not allow that Belarra appear to account for the norm. He was a very significant detail of the bad moment that the relationship between the two coalition partners is going through. So much so that sources from the department of the general secretary of Podemos later revealed that they had unsuccessfully requested to intervene in the traditional press conference after the Council of Ministers. Deprived of that platform, Belarra turned to a three and a half minute video on Twitter to explain the details of the new law. “I am very happy to be able to tell you that the Council of Ministers has given final green light to the new family law & rdquor ;, he said.
Today the Council of Ministers definitively gives the green light to the #FamilyLaw. All rights for all families 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/CGgi3q7ATd
—Ione Belarra (@ionebelarra) March 28, 2023
The null participation of Montero
The parity law has not been alien to the confrontation between the partners either. On the contrary. The norm, which will force the representation of men and women to be equal in large companies, governments, electoral lists, professional associations and juries, enters fully into matters that depend on the Ministry of Equality. But Montero has not had no paper in her.
The norm was announced by Sánchez himself on March 4, at the gates of 8M, in the midst of the battle for the ‘only yes is yes’ law, with socialists and purples disputing the feminism banner. When the draft was approved three days later by the Government, the economic vice president, Nadia Calvino, confirmed that the participation of the head of Equality in this initiative had been nil, thus raising the discomfort of the minority partner.