United We can accentuate its profile before the PSOE on the doors of the new electoral cycle

The Coalition government it will exceed the legislature’s equator in the next few days. Two years of alliance that they trust in the Executive – or so they say – will last two more. But the truth is that the next electoral cycle is approaching. Castilla y León, in February, and Andalusia, no later than the last quarter of 2022, will start a new round of elections that will culminate at the end of 2023 with the general elections. With this calendar it is inevitable that both government formations – beyond their apparent good harmony – begin to set a profile. United We can do so in the coming months from Congress with two bills that the socialists do not endorse and reopening some old dispute.

In the next period of sessions in the Lower House -from February to June-, the purple ones will be able to take to the Plenary two proposals of law, according to the quota that corresponds to them. And they will take advantage of it to distance themselves from their partners. Sources from United We can explain that the first rule they will take to debate is their proposal to create a public energy company that will assume the “completed concessions of the public hydraulic domain.” The initiative, the flagship of the purple electoral programs, does not convince the PSOE, which does not believe that it will have “a real impact” on the bill paid by the consumer. The definitive ‘no’ has not yet arrived, but it seems much more real than a ‘yes’ from the socialists.

Much clearer will be the clash when the purple ones take to the hemicycle of Congress their proposal to law to legalize the use of marijuana. Since they entered the Lower House, Unidos Podemos has championed this cause by holding several days in Parliament to defend their proposal. The Socialists, unlike other groups, have never participated. The ‘no’, therefore, is more obvious. In mid-October, the PSOE already voted against a similar proposal from Más País, preventing it from being processed.

Old quarrels without closing

Unidos Podemos also wants to battle its partner in areas already explored and debated endlessly: the Housing Law. The bill that took almost a year to develop within the Government due to the endless discrepancies will reach Congress in the coming weeks, after a new delay. It will be then when the purple ones will reopen the fight that it closed in false with its allies to try to recover some of the demands that were left in the previous negotiating table. Party sources explain that they are preparing a series of amendments to “try to improve the content“and they have already asked the members of the Executive to demand a more ambitious standard.

Specifically, the dispute will revolve around the deadline established in the preliminary draft for the creation of a system of reference price indexes to which large property holders in stressed areas must comply. Currently, this period is 18 months after the approval of the rule, which would mean that it was not in force until the next legislature. United We wants it downgrade to three months.

In addition, in Congress there are two other proposals of law of United We Can in process that cause tension with its partners: the law to decriminalize insults to the Crown and outrages to Spain; and the comprehensive law on mental health. Both were accepted with the ‘yes’ of the PSOE. However, the partners have profound differences in the two matters and, for the moment, they have not been able to agree on amendments.

Investigate the Catholic Church

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Another turning point for the purple will be the arrival in Congress of the animal protection and trans law proposals, currently stuck in the Council of Ministers. Both promoted by the ministries of United We Can – the first from Equality and the second from Social Rights – will be useful to highlight their profile. To this is added that, in the coming weeks, the Executive intends to definitively approve the law to guarantee sexual freedom, the so-called ‘only yes is yes’ law, which was drawn up by the Ministry of Irene Montero and that caused the first internal friction of the coalition.

Outside of legislative action, the president of the United We Can parliamentary group, Jaume Asens, announced this Monday that they will present together with ERC and EH Bildu a petition to create an investigative commission on the child abuse by the Catholic Church. “It makes me strange to think that parties like the PSOE are excluded from this initiative, because it is common sense, reasonable and in the sense that Pope Francis asks,” he said in statements to Europa Press.