Just a few hours after the largest parliamentary break in the coalition government, with both partners voting separately for a law issued by the Executive itself, a selfies of the socialist wing rumbles through the corridors of the Congress of Deputies. It is a photo of ten PSOE ministers with Pedro Sánchez celebrating 8-M, International Women’s Day, without Irene Montero and no representative of the Podemos quota.
In politics, sometimes, absences reveal more than presences. At the time the snapshot was taken, just before the government control session, the Minister for Equality was a few meters away in the Lower House, but she was not invited to join. Neither did the Minister of the Interior. Fernando Grande-Marlaskawho was present in the chamber.
The processing of the reform of the law of only Yeah is if It was not the first to break the so-called investiture block, but it was the most visible. The PSOE managed to get Congress to approve the consideration of its text with the votes of PP, Vox, Ciudadanos and PNV, in front of the rest of the Chamber headed by United We Can.
💪💜 #8M pic.twitter.com/azVNnrIBq4
— Diana Morant (@DianaMorantR) March 8, 2023
The Minister of Equality weathered a good part of Tuesday’s debate in solitude, the most unusual of the legislature in terms of the division of partners. In the morning, Montero and Belarra were sitting at the table of the Council of Ministers with the partners who, according to their party, attack women in the eve of 8-M.
Yolanda Díaz, leader of Unidas Podemos, did not appear until the last moment and only to vote against the reform. “We never had to get here,” she shared in the hallways to a group of reporters. Sanchez didn’t even show up.
[El ‘sí es sí’ rompe ‘de facto’ el Gobierno: Podemos une al PSOE con los “fascistas” contrarios a la ley]
That same morning, 24 hours before the well-known photo, Moncloa prevented the Minister of Equality from appearing before the media after the Council of Ministers to make a statement on 8-M, as he did last year. that should be too unusualbut nothing surprising in the current context, with both partners at a standstill on how – and with whom – to reform the only yes is yes.
“It does not matter if we present one or seven proposals. The PSOE is not going to agree to anything“, reproached a source from the purple leadership on Tuesday. The frustration of the purple ministers was visible from the rostrum of the hemicycle, with Ione Belarra clenching her jaw and Irene Montero on the verge of tears before the attacks of parliamentary groups, including the socialist.
[Montero y Belarra, dispuestas a seguir en el Gobierno aunque el PSOE desmonte sus leyes estrella]
Ruled out the rupture
Neither Irene Montero nor Ione Belarra, much less Yolanda Díaz, they have plans to leave the Council of Ministers before the umpteenth excess of their partner, and the noise of the last weeks has more of outburst than of War declaration. Nor does Sánchez intend to call them to chapter, since nobody wants to bear the blame for a hypothetical breakup.
It is true that fear is always in the environment and that everything is pushed to the limit, but it is not new either. This week a prominent socialist leader was very clear in stating that “the coalition is a fiction”, in reference to the fact that PSOE and Unidas Podemos they will vote separately the laws that they themselves approved in the Council of Ministers.
The image of these days, with the two parties avoiding each other, negotiating with a frown but unsigned papers, is already reminiscent of that of a couple who is separating and fighting for custody of the children and property ownership. And yet, it seems that she never finishes getting divorced.
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