In the middle of an improvised four-phase plan to lift Spain's lockdown which is solely aimed at holding fast to the single command put in place for the pandemic, distancing the country's autonomous communities from major decision-making and recovering the provinces as the territorial entity of the deconfinement process, Pedro Sánchez's tally of parliamentary votes is beginning to fall short. The latest to abandon him in his quest to extend the Spanish state of alarm has been the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), as was made clear by Basque president Íñigo Urkullu on Wednesday announcing his opposition to the extension of the relevant decree, which the Spanish PM is due to put before Congress next week. On Monday, Catalonia's ERC had already issued a warning to Sánchez indicating that it could opt for a no vote, going a step further than its abstention at the vote for the last extension, already the third; the other two Catalan pro-independence parties JxCat and the CUP already voted no on April 22nd, and will do so again.
It has taken a long time, but in the end, they are all waking up and smelling the coffee of Pedro Sánchez's programme, a fully-fledged recentralization and a dismantling of Spain's state of autonomous communities. There is a regression which takes in all spheres of public life, with the complicit silence of Podemos and Catalunya en Comú. It is of little use that, in private, leaders of Pablo Iglesias's party express discomfort about the drift of the government, the authoritarianism of its leader and their own ignorance of decisions he is taking. This tactic is too old and in the face of the massive crisis being experienced it is practically worthless.
Basque and Catalan pro-independence and nationalist politicians, who played an active role in the investiture of Pedro Sánchez via three of their parties - ERC, the PNV and Bildu - are now obliged to raise the tone since more important things are at stake than the political future of the prime minister. The smartest move would be to take a stand against the state of alarm and force Sánchez into either making a pact with the PP or simply defeat him in Congress on the extension of the decree. The power would thus return to the autonomous communities and the single command and centralization of decisions would end. This is the only path to take against the unilateralism which Pedro Sánchez has practiced from the start.
The change of positioning by Urkullu, in line with what president Quim Torra has been defending for weeks, signifies a new confluence which has appeared lately. It is something to keep in mind, as anything close to a minimal consensus between the Basque and Catalan governments would set off all the alarms in Madrid. Such a unity would multiply.