With the Spanish state immersed in an institutional crisis confronting the judiciary with the political powers, there was no shortage of tension when two key antagonists of that dispute, Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, met in face-to face debate this Wednesday. The prime minister of the PSOE-Unidas Podemos government and the president of the opposition PP clashed in the Senate, after the PP itself had managed to overturn, through an injunction which was approved by the Constitutional Court, the amendments presented by the government to renew this same court. "You have silenced Parliament", the Socialist PM told the conservative, since the bill on which Senators were to vote no longer includes the proposed reforms to judicial power, removed because of the court injunction. "You have gone too far," said Sánchez.
The face-to-face session had started with Feijóo's accusations towards Sánchez, of, "little by little, perfecting his obedience to the Catalan independence movement". The PP leader was referring to the fact that the Spanish PM reached agreement with pro-independence ERC on the repeal of the crime of sedition, as well as the reform of the crime of misuse of funds, key elements of this same reform package, and which have not been stopped by the court injunction. "Before you gave them a 'Yes', they had already made another proposal", said Feijóo in reference to the new independence referendum proposal that ERC has made, along the lines of that of Montenegro.
After recalling that Sánchez had pledged during the 2019 electoral campaign to condemn the holding of unauthorised referendums, to arrest exiled Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and not to make deals with the independence movement, Feijóo asked the question that he had registered on the order of the day: "What will be his next concession?” He also asked Sánchez if "he already has a date" to hold a self-determination referendum in Catalonia.
Sánchez, who spent part of Feijóo's address laughing ironically at the messages that the leader of the Spanish right was sending, did not take long to recall that the two consultations that have been held on the independence of Catalonia in recent years (the informal consultation of 9th November 2014 and the referendum of 1st October 2017) both took place under PP governments. Having said that, Sánchez took issue strongly with the interference of the Constitutional Court in the Spanish houses of parliament. According to the PM, the "less and less hidden powers" currently controlled by the PP have "taken away the powers given to it by the parliamentary electors".
"Parliament will speak, and very clearly", the Socialist leader affirmed, referring to the bill that the PSOE and Unidas Podemos will present in the coming days to the Congress of Deputies in order to revive the two amendments that sought to renew the membership of the Constitutional Court. "Enough of discrediting the Constitutional Court", Feijóo replied to Sánchez, in addition to accusing the PM of "treading on the accelerator of institutional degradation". Finally, the PP leader again asked the Spanish president to call elections. He did so on the day that the CIS polling agency has announced out that the PP is closing the gap with the PSOE and is only two percent behind.