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The oldest barons of the PSOE, critical of the power plans underpinned by pro-independence and radical forces, have taken a stand regarding Pedro Sánchez's decision to allow the signing of a pact with Bildu in exchange for his abstention in the fifth extension of the state of alarm, by virtue of which the 2012 labor reform would be entirely repealed before the expiration of the extraordinary measures adopted to deal with the coronavirus and, in addition, would ensure preferential treatment for the Basque Country and Navarra in terms of debt capacity.

The Presidents of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page; Aragon, Javier Lambán; The Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres , and the Valencian Community, Ximo Puig, reject the agreement with the abertzale formation , they bet on undertaking a strategy of agreements looking towards the center and moderation - an option that today offers Citizens - and are clearly positioned On the side of the third vice president and economy minister, Nadia Calviño, the first member of the government who stood up to the agreement and asked Pedro Sánchez for its disavowal.

Calviño dismissed the pact with Bildu as "absurd and counterproductive", not only because of the impossibility of repealing a stroke of the labor law, but also because it would dynamite the framework of social dialogue and raise serious obstacles to the positions that Spain defends in Brussels to access millionaire transfers.

Betting on Calviño's theses, the barons -Page the most forceful- give a blow to the second vice president, Pablo Iglesias, for whom the content of the pact is "crystalline" and must be followed. Beyond considering the content of the pact unacceptable, the barons express their discomfort at the stamping of the PSOE seal together with that of a formation that has never condemned the ETA attacks and whose current general coordinator, Arnaldo Otegi, was a member of the gang.

García-Page: "It is a very black line"

The President of Castilla-La Mancha attacked the agreement for being based on "extortion". "The pacts that are achieved on the basis of political torture are not valid," he maintains.

He considers the agreement "not done" and recalls that "making a pact with those who have despised life" has always been for the PSOE "not a red line, but a very black one". He asks to rebuild social dialogue and offers himself as a facilitator of agreements with other formations, mainly with Cs.

Aragonese Javier Lambán also disagrees with the agreement. For him the pacts must be made "with the parties that believe in Spain and in the common future of the Spanish", while the Valencian Ximo Puig insists on the need for the labor architecture, as Calviño defends, to be built within the framework social dialogue, that is, with the agreement of employers and unions.

Also joining the critical chorus is Canarian President Ángel Víctor Torres, who demands that the government "clarify" the content of the agreement. Torres received the announcement of the pact with "surprise," reports Efe .

Image of the extraordinary Council of Ministers held this Friday.POOL

For the Canarian leader, faced with a very serious economic situation due to the collapse of tourism in the islands, the most lacerating point of the pact is the one that admits preferential financing and debt conditions for the Basque Country and Navarra. "It is not imaginable," he maintains, "that there is a different financing formula for some and for others."

The dissenting position with these approaches came from the hand of the Navarrese president, María Chivite , and the Asturian, Adrián Barbón , both empowered from the ranks most loyal to Sanchismo .

Chivite obtained the presidency thanks to the abstention of Bildu, and Barbón, closely linked to the deputy secretary of the PSOE, Adriana Lastra, rose after the retirement of Javier Fernández , historical of the PSOE and president of the Party Manager after the fall of Sánchez as secretary general in 2016.

Both minimize that Bildu is a force with which the PSOE always refused to agree and defend that "the important thing is not who you agree with but what and what for."

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  • PSOE
  • Bildu
  • Nadia Calviño
  • Pablo Iglesias
  • Pedro Sánchez
  • Emiliano García-Page
  • Javier Lambán
  • Ximo Puig

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