Pedro Sánchez evaluates bringing forward the elections after the fall of the housing decrees

After a very intense weekend of contacts, speaking with almost the entire party, with its ministers, with its advisors and with its main partners, the president, Pedro Sánchez, now has everything ready to communicate his decision and announce this Monday whether he will bring forward the elections immediately as many collaborators and leaders of the PSOE have recommended. It is a question that only concerns him, a key prerogative of every Spanish president, who has always chosen the day most favorable to his interests and those of his party. Sánchez has meditated these days on the strategy to respond to the defeat of the housing decrees, but practically all the sources consulted point in the same direction: an announcement of a call this Monday.

Sánchez has currently kept a speech on the agenda at 9:30 a.m. on Monday at the National Congress of Family Business, at the Príncipe Pío Theater in Madrid, but he could cancel it at any time. It also happens that this Monday the King, who out of deference is always informed of these types of decisions in advance, is leaving on an official trip to Finland. However, it could be communicated to you before it takes off, even by phone.

The decision already seems very oriented throughout the weekend in the absence of Sánchez finalizing it, but all the members of the Government consulted are already working with this scenario as something inevitable and even desirable. They believe that the social indignation over the vote against the three right-wing parties - PP, Vox and Junts - to the so-called “Maricarmen decree”, which tried to save victims like her from evictions of investment funds that buy homes in blocks to expel their tenants and multiply the prices with new ones, opens an opportunity to try to mobilize a very unmotivated left.

Therefore, over the weekend, rather than devoting themselves to mulling over the decision, which is actually only made by Sánchez and which has already begun to be quite oriented since Friday's vote in Congress, the hard core of the president and his teams have concentrated above all on thinking about different possible scenarios around the idea of ​​the advance. And also, and above all, the movements that must be made to respond to this social indignation and thus try to build a good electoral proposal for citizens.

In La Moncloa they are deeply indignant with Friday's vote; They do not quite understand how it is possible that Junts, which, according to them, agreed with the decree and had negotiated it, ended up overthrowing it. They also criticize that the PP, which in the past approved several anti-eviction shields, was not even capable of abstaining to let something pass that is a social emergency highlighted by the Maricarmen case.

One of the big questions as part of the purpose of responding to the street is what happens to the expired decrees. At La Moncloa they are studying in detail the most appropriate legal formula to try to recover as much as possible, especially from the first decree, that of the anti-eviction shield, which was agreed with PNV, the Canarian Coalition and with Junts, according to the Government, and had the possibility of leaving.

Even if the electoral advance occurs, the Executive is not in office - that is after the elections - but in full power, and therefore could approve the same or similar decrees again. What would happen is that the Cortes would be dissolved and then the validation of these decrees would depend on the Permanent Deputation, no longer on the plenary session. And there the Government has a great advantage: the Junts vote is irrelevant. The Executive needs 35 votes, which give the absolute majority of the 69 that make up that body, smaller than the plenary session and designed to decide instead of it outside of session periods or when the Cortes are dissolved. The PSOE has 25 and Sumar 6, so it would need four to reach the majority. It would be enough for EH Bildu, ERC, Podemos and PNV, who already supported the first of the decrees in Congress, to vote in favor for it to go ahead. Junts' rejection would be irrelevant here. The one that would fail is the second decree, due to the opposition of the PNV.

It is a hypothetical solution that is being worked on in La Moncloa, although others are also being studied to try to provide some response to the demands of the street, with thousands of people demonstrating to demand that the Government do something after PP, Vox and Junts overturned the decrees.

On the table has also been the possibility of not calling elections, at least for the moment, and trying to approve those decrees again to portray the right even more. The problem is that the Government would have to try a new negotiation with Junts, which now seems unviable after what in La Moncloa has been experienced as a true betrayal a few days before Carles Puigdemont finally achieves amnesty and can return to Catalonia. Even so, Sánchez has all the freedom to decide and could at the last minute opt for a different strategy to try to delay the elections somewhat if he believes that this would give him more time to prepare them better.

As soon as the election date is set, the PSOE and La Moncloa believe that they can run a campaign with a clearly progressive message aimed at promising that with more votes they could intervene in the housing market. And it would also focus on the defense of public services, education, health and dependency, against what the Executive defines as a wave of privatization of the PP communities.