If a budget is anything, it is the presentation to public opinion of what your political priorities are. And that is exactly what the Pedro Sánchez government did this Tuesday when it became known that the Spanish cabinet had approved a draft for the public accounts that raises the spending ceiling to 198 billion euros and includes a significant 25% increase in the defence budget for the year of 2023. It is certainly not the most significant defence quota ever, that would be too much. But it is exceedingly surprising, beyond the commitments that Sánchez may have acquired with the Biden administration or even its very president, as well as with the highest officials of NATO, that such a substantial increase is made in a year in which all the economic indicators are bad or very bad for Spain and that the approaching economic crisis has such an alarming profile.
This will undoubtedly not be a matter of discrepancy with PP, Vox or Ciudadanos, but it should be a point of disagreement with the Socialists (PSOE) partners, Unidas Podemos - within the Spanish government itself - or its usual allies in Congress, the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) and Bildu. It could be argued that the Spanish government has the ability to take on debt, an attribution that, for example, the government of Catalonia does not have for now. This circumstance, meaning that it has strings it can pull, is a very good resource for raising pensions, as it has announced, by around 8.5%. It is logical that, exceptionally, the Reserve Fund should be used for this, as it is the only way to avoid the elderly losing a lot of purchasing power in the face of the current galloping inflation which, more and more, affects absolutely essential basic products for the most needy sectors of society.
Thus, compliance is preserved with the Toledo Pact, an agreement between Spanish political groups to protect pension levels. To achieve this, the addition of 2.96 billion euros to the reserve fund will be necessary, a circumstance that will occur for the first time in thirteen years. This government move should not be subject to any criticism, as there is no other way to mitigate the difficulties of millions of people with their shopping baskets. It will certainly contribute to leaving pensioners minimally out of the equation of extreme hardship, although it does not take into account many of the increases in energy prices that they need more than anyone before the arrival of winter.
Thus, unofficially, the period of negotiation of the Spanish government's budget, between the PSOE and the rest of the parliamentary parties is opened. First of all, it will be with ERC, which will approach its third negotiation with the Spanish government in the current legislature and it will be necessary to see if they are able to reverse the trend of the previous two in which, for one reason or another, the Socialists went end up taking the votes and failing to fulfill their public commitments and even some private ones. The agreement on the political prisoner pardons that ERC reached with the Pedro Sánchez government is retreating further and further into the past and the party led by Oriol Junqueras needs some victory to justify its almost permanent implication in many of the major decisions, with ERC having helped to overcome many of the obstacles that Pedro Sánchez, without them, would not have been able to get past.