The unilateral decision of the socialist sector of the Government to extend the activity of the Almaraz nuclear power plant until 2030 is the latest in a long list of clashes between the PSOE and Sumar and again, as in so many previous clashes, it tests the capacity for resistance and reaction of the minority partner, which yesterday jumped like a spring and with unusual forcefulness when the publication of the measure was found in the BOE. He made it clear that he considered it a "mistake" and presented the outcome as the result of the Ministry of Ecological Transition having bowed to the interests of the "energy oligopoly."
Beyond the theatricality with which politics plays to convey messages, Sumar's enormous anger has solid arguments. Because Pedro Sánchez signed a commitment to Yolanda Díaz to close the nuclear plants. It is an objective that the vice president took from her in the negotiations and that is now a dead letter. And it is not just anything when it comes to an issue that is the banner of a left that is seeking its place and coming out in the middle of the process of refounding itself for the elections.
The pact between the PSOE and Sumar by which the coalition Government was formed, signed and presented by Sánchez and Díaz on October 24, 2023, includes in one of the points of its 48 pages the following promise: «We will make a planned, safe, orderly and socially fair closure of nuclear plants, staggering the cessation of operation of all Spanish plants between 2027 and 2035, continuing the instruments already developed in the Transition Strategy "Just."
This, with the extension of Almaraz Unit I and II until June 8, 2030, when the calendar proposed its closure in 2027 and 2028, respectively, sinks that commitment before the Spaniards and drags Sumar into non-compliance, to the displeasure of its most anti-nuclear sectors, thereby hitting the renewal of a political project that is making ambition with the energy transition one of its signs of differentiation with the PSOE and, on the other hand, torpedoing the label of "ecosocialist labor" with which the Sumar Movement party - one of the parts of the alliance - wants to build its new post-Yolanda Díaz identity.
This explains the emphatic response with which Sumar reacted yesterday, distancing himself from his government partner by expressing his "absolute disagreement" with Almaraz's extension, denouncing "a deep rupture" of consensus within the Government with the decision adopted and accusing Sánchez of "following the path of the right and the extreme right" by accepting the extension.
When consulted yesterday, official Sumar sources did not clarify whether they knew the news beforehand or if they came across it when it appeared in the BOE in the middle of the August holidays and on the eve of the weekend with more patron saint festivities.
Izquierda Unida, a key actor in the present and future of Sumar, verbalized that the PSOE's "error" "breaks with the roadmap" that the Government had given itself and that it exhibits an "inconsistency" with renewable energies. But beyond these criticisms, the leader of IU, Antonio Maíllo, glimpsed with his words the fear that exists within the alliance that Almaraz is not an isolated case and that, in reality, the PSOE could be silently giving a change of direction to its approach to nuclear weapons. Not in vain, the debate on this type of energy has been greatly conditioned in the last year and a half by the great blackout of 2025, and which PP and Vox use as an example of the extent to which Spain needs to continue having these plants.
The fact is that Maíllo called for "addressing a shielding strategy" within the Government so that Almaraz is not "the beginning of a modification of successive extensions" of other nuclear plants, because the PSOE is giving the "message" that these changes can occur, and that "just as Almaraz has been modified, others that close in 2028, 2029 or 2030 can be modified." It remains to be seen if this call causes consequences among the Government's partners. For now, nuclear weapons are added to corruption, housing, rearmament, reduction of working hours or time control on the list of fractures within the Government.
