The mayor of Seville, José Luis Sanz (PP), has been forced to extend the deadline that had been set to have a budget for 2024, now setting the first days of March as the deadline, but there are no indications that this time extra will make your task easier. On the contrary, his only alternative to have new accounts is through the PSOE if it grants him carte blanche, since Podemos-IU has distanced itself and what should be its natural ally, Vox, is still on the warpath: or it enters the local government, or that they forget their vote. And to make it clear that he is not giving in, the municipal plenary session this Thursday was the scene of his challenge with his negative vote to all the budget modifications presented (and needed) by the PP, which in turn has strongly attacked those of Santiago Abascal.
Vox blocks projects worth 9.5 million euros
In total, there have been nine budget modifications and two credit supplements that have been put to the vote, among which payments were included for the Santa Justa transport interchange, a metropolitan bike lane, energy improvement works in homes in Los Pajaritos or the purchase of a crematorium oven for the cemetery. Vox has been clear about this and has voted ‘no’ to everything, with which nine of the 11 operations (for a combined amount of around 9.5 million euros) have gone ahead thanks to the favorable vote or the abstention of PSOE and We can-IU. In fact, the ‘yes’ of the coalition has allowed the approval of two of the points that the PSOE opposed.
That is to say, once again it has been the left that has saved José Luis Sanz’s belongings. In fact, it is the fourth time that he has escaped trouble thanks to the socialists, who already helped him approve the tax ordinances, the increase in the water rate and the first major budget modification. These three operations are the ones that – with the extended 2023 accounts – have allowed the government of a minority PP (it needs two votes) that does not find partners to approve this year’s budget to not collapse.
The PP accuses Vox of irresponsibility and stubbornness
The fact is that Vox is more than willing to support these accounts, but maintains at all costs its demand that to do so it must enter the local government, a pressure that the popular people are opposing so far. Thus, in this plenary session it has become clear that PP and Vox continue to reproach each other. The far-right party did not intervene in the debate prior to the vote on the budget modifications, the most relevant issue that the plenary session addressed, but then its spokesperson, Cristina Peláez, was happy to attack the popular ones: their way of governing is “extending and patching”, other cities in which PP and Vox govern together already have their budgets and “a well-defined city model” and the blame for all this lies with the mayor.
The person in charge of defending the municipal government has been the Treasury delegate and also spokesperson for the PP, Juan Bueno, for whom Vox is like Pedro Sánchez at the time, installed in the “stance of no means no.” “They are not speaking from a place of responsibility and they are determined to join the government or nothing,” and then reproach the three councilors of Santiago Abascal’s party for saying that what they have done is vote against citizen projects, “punish the neighborhoods and paralyze the city”, so let’s see how they explain that they have opposed improving things and “they have left Los Pajaritos stranded.”
These arguments have not made a special impact on Cristina Peláez, who has justified herself by saying that they are not against the substance but against the forms, because in her opinion – as long as they do not agree with them – what they are trying to do is patch the 2023 budget of the PSOE against which they presented an amendment to the entirety. “Those who have not been able to reach an understanding are you, who have the city paralyzed, so do not use us as a scapegoat,” the spokesperson added.
José Luis Sanz avoids the topic but throws a dart at the PSOE
And to all this, has José Luis Sanz said anything? Well, he has not taken advantage of his interventions in the groups’ questions to the mayor to enter this field, although he has had the opportunity to throw a pill when the Podemos-IU spokesperson, Susana Hornillo, has reproached him for the candle ordinance that is in place. finalizing is an “amnesty” for many bars with terraces. “I’m voting: those who defend the amnesty are all there,” he said, pointing to the group of left-wing parties for the negotiation of the pardon for Carles Puigdemont, “use another term because none of us who defend the amnesty are here.” ”.
Among those mentioned was the PSOE, whose deputy spokesperson, Sonia Gaya, had previously reproached the popular party for “what are they going to do when they cannot live off the income” of the 2023 budget. “They have no project or strategy, everything is functional “Because they don’t work, they don’t even bother to bring proposals to the plenary session,” he criticized, while warning them that with so much budget modification they will have difficulty meeting the deficit objective set by fiscal rules recovered after the post-pandemic truce. .
The issue will be especially complicated if the PP is finally unable to carry out this year’s budget – which amounts to 1,031 million euros without taking into account the autonomous organizations – and has to extend the accounts for 2023, a scenario that no longer rules out even the councilor himself. On the other hand, the socialists are convinced that in the end there will be a PP-Vox pact no matter how much they stage their differences “as if they were Pimpinela or the joke fights of Juanito Valderrama and Dolores Abril,” described the socialist spokesperson and former mayor Antonio Muñoz. “They are now in the phase of making friends, courting each other, and in the end they will go to live together in the same house,” he predicted.