Paloma H. ​​Matellano Madrid

Madrid

Updated Friday, March 15, 2024-02:26

  • Budgets Sumar criticizes that the PSOE renounces approving them: "The Government's obligation is to try until the end"

  • Catalonia Aragonès advances elections for May 12 after failing to approve its Budgets

The newspaper archive once again exposes

Pedro Sánchez

.

After the announcement that the President of the Government is renouncing to persist in the negotiation of the General Budgets for 2024, memory returns to the demands that the socialist made to

Mariano Rajoy

in 2018 when his negotiation of the Public Accounts was stuck.

In an interval of less than twenty days, between February 17 and March 6, 2018, Sánchez demanded that the then President of the Government call general elections

up to ten times

, arguing that a Government without Budgets "cannot govern, no can do anything."

"Is this the Government that our country needs?" Sánchez asked then at a rally in Bilbao.

"Approving the Budget

is the first and main obligation of a Government

," he stated days before in front of his Federal Committee, accusing Rajoy's Government of "evading its responsibilities at the head of the institutions."

"

A Government without Budgets is as useful as a car without gasoline

," he condemned with irony.

The now President of the Executive considered that not approving the Public Accounts reduces "security and credibility" to the policy and assured that if the Government partners were not able to reach an agreement they should allow the Spaniards "to go to the polls so that another majority solve the problems of citizens.

This request to call elections was repeated several times in those days: "

Either Budgets or elections

," Sánchez insisted.

"I demand that Mariano Rajoy present the PGE now and that, if he cannot count on a parliamentary majority to approve them, he calls the Spaniards to the polls," he stated on his

X

account (formerly

Twitter

).

On that occasion, the Popular Party finally managed to approve the Public Accounts with the support of Ciudadanos, the PNV, Unión del Pueblo Navarro,

Foro Asturias

, Canarian Coalition and Nueva Canarias.

It was on May 24, 2018, just a week before the motion of censure against Rajoy that elevated Pedro Sánchez to the presidency of the Government.

Those Budgets were inherited by the socialist Executive, later extending them up to two times.

Thus, its validity was extended until December 31, 2020, making these Accounts of Popular Minister

Cristóbal Montoro

the longest-lived in Spanish democracy.

Despite this, the leader of the PSOE was then also very critical of reusing the PGE from one year to the next.

"Living off the extension is prolonging people's problems," lamented Sánchez, who added that refusing to approve new Public Accounts each year is "

not being accountable to Parliament

and to the Spanish people."

"We live in times that are too momentous to do nothing, because what happens when nothing is done is that things eventually rot," he denounced.

The withdrawal regarding this year's Public Accounts, which just a few days ago the Executive intended to approve "as soon as possible", occurs as a result of the hasty electoral advance in Catalonia, precisely forced after the Parliament yesterday overturned the regional Budgets.

Sánchez was already forced to call general elections for this same reason in 2019, when the Catalan independentists of ERC and PDeCAT voted with PP and Ciudadanos to return the Public Accounts.