The Spanish socialist government can not get its budget to Parliament. If he does not, the Prime Minister is talking about potential new elections on Tuesday. These could take place at the same time as the European women on May 26, 2019.

The political threat is clear. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on Tuesday that he would call an election if he could not get his budget adopted, for the time being blocked by Catalan separatists.

"If we can not approve the budget, my desire to reach the end of the legislature (expected in June 2020) will be questioned," he told a conference organized by The Economist in Madrid.

"I will decide when to call elections and I will do when it will be in the general interest of the country," added the socialist leader who can however decide to extend the 2018 budget, concocted by his conservative predecessor.

It blocks on the budget

A week ago, Pedro Sanchez still hammered his will to govern until 2020, despite the accumulation of setbacks for his executive, the most minority since the restoration of Spanish democracy forty years ago.

The reason for this turnaround is his inability to secure enough support for his budget, designed hand-in-hand with the radical left of Podemos, Judge Paloma Roman, a political scientist at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

"It's an accumulation of difficult situations, but the fundamental cause is that it can not pass its own budget" which includes a sharp increase in the minimum wage and "would be an important marker of identity for a socialist government like hers, "she told AFP.

Sanchez still has several months to vote, the budget 2018 was finally adopted last June.

But the Catalan separatists, who allowed him to come to power in June by overthrowing the conservative Mariano Rajoy, refuse to approve since the heavy demands of up to 25 years in prison in early November against separatists jailed for their role in the October 2017 secession attempt.

However, with 84 socialist deputies out of 350, the executive imperatively needs the support of the Catalans, in addition to those of Podemos and the Basque nationalists to overcome the fierce opposition of the Popular Party (right) and Ciudadanos (center-right) who are constantly calling for early elections.

Beyond the budget, difficulties of all kinds accumulate for Pedro Sanchez between the exhumation of the dictator Franco of his mausoleum, which does not stop being delayed, or the agreement concluded with the Popular Party to name the magistrates of the Supreme Court, which shattered Monday.

"Every day, (Pedro Sanchez) has a new front that opens, which shakes him and can clearly push him to an election call" that would allow him perhaps to win seats in parliament, judge Paloma Roman.

At the same time as the Europeans?

Monday, the Minister of Transport José Luis Abalos, very close to Pedro Sanchez, had not excluded that legislative elections can take place on May 26 during a "super-Sunday" making them coincide with the European, municipal and the regional ones.

In this case, Pedro Sanchez would have until April 1 at the latest to summon them.

Advantage: the Socialist Party is for the moment given first in all the polls and to call elections without delay would limit the wear of the power.

But "there is a debate in the government, between those who want to advance the elections and those who are more dubious," says political scientist at the University of Zaragoza Cristina Monge. Of which Sanchez in person, according to her.

For even if the Socialists came first, they would be far from getting an absolute majority, according to the polls, and would be condemned to difficult negotiations with the other political forces.

In addition, Pedro Sanchez needs "two, three, four things that he can show as a success of his government" to launch his campaign, continues Cristina Monge.

Because "what can he sell for the time to the electorate, beyond the speech of victimization: + they did not let me do it? " Asks the political scientist who sees rather elections in the fall of 2019.

In both cases, the Sanchez government would break the record of that of the centrist Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, who remained in office for 21 months (February 1981-December 1982), making it the shortest in 40 years of democracy.