The first parliamentary defeat in the processing of the Budgets raises the option of an early election while the Government maintains its roadmap

The Government will continue with its roadmap despite the parliamentary defeat suffered this Tuesday, when PP, Vox and Junts overturned the deficit path for the next General State Budgets. In La Moncloa, they maintain that public accounts continue to be “the main milestone” with which they intend to start the new political year after the summer break, although the setback once again puts on the table a scenario that the Executive avoids verbalizing: the possibility of an early election if the new accounts ultimately fail.

What if the Budgets do not go ahead and the legislature concludes without new public accounts? This is the question we put to the Government and on which the answer remains the same: “We are not in that scenario”.

What the Executive of Pedro Sánchez does not verbalize, but is part of the scenarios it contemplates, is the possibility of an early election starting next year —when it is politically more convenient— if finally the public accounts do not manage to go ahead once they reach the Congress of Deputies after the summer.

For now, the Government has a new opportunity next July 23. Even if it suffers a new setback, the legislation allows it to continue with the budget processing. And everything indicates that this will be the case. “Everyone knows they won’t have budgets. Stop deceiving people,” said Junts deputy Josep Maria Cruset during the debate. Privately, the Catalan party maintains the same diagnosis and believes that there is not a sufficient majority to pass the accounts.

Next stop: housing decree

“Before the end of the month there will be a new decree law,” assured the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Pablo Bustinduy, in recent hours in an interview on Cadena SER, where he insisted on the objective of “protecting three million tenants” and responding to what he considers “the main problem of the working class in Spain.”

Thus, and in parallel to the budgetary path, the Government wants to bring a new housing decree to Congress before the end of July, which continues to be negotiated amid a new internal clash between PSOE and Sumar over tax benefits aimed at landlords.

The Executive has set out to weave a text that can garner the support of a parliamentary majority, something that, for now, is still far from guaranteed. The objective is to avoid a new failure like that of last April, when Congress rejected the two-year extension of the extraordinary measures for rentals.

Sources from Sumar have indicated that the socialists' proposals are "more right-wing" than those of Junts and maintain that, while Carles Puigdemont's party is "facilitating the agreement," it is the PSOE who "has to move."

However, Junts lowers the optimism. They assure that, for now, "there is no text" and, although they do not close the door to negotiation, they cool expectations about an imminent agreement.

In Podemos, which defends diametrically opposed measures, they also confirm that no open negotiation exists. The party demands the suspension of evictions of people in vulnerable situations and rejects that the decree includes measures to favor landlords, precisely one of the main points of friction that keeps the debate between PSOE and Sumar alive.

Meanwhile, the PNV maintains its usual caution. Its sources confirm that conversations exist — which translates into an exchange of concrete proposals — but avoid commenting on the state of the negotiations. They also recall that beyond the work that their parliamentary group develops "all the time," these contacts remain essential.

The negotiation of the housing decree has thus become more than a legislative initiative. After the importance that Pedro Sánchez's Government, and especially Sumar, have given to this measure, a new parliamentary failure would mean another blow for an increasingly demanded majority. At the same time, it would serve as a thermometer for the great political battle that the Executive wants to wage after the summer: that of a Budget on which a good part of the legislature's journey depends, a legislature that has less and less life left.