The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, called for early general elections on April 28, two days after his draft budget was shipwrecked in parliament.
In an appearance at the government Palace of La Moncloa, the social democratic leader announced his decision to dissolve the Cortes (bicameral parliament) and call new legislative elections for Sunday, April 28.
Between doing nothing and continuing to govern with state budgets extended and giving the word to the Spanish, I prefer the second option because this country must ‘continue to advance and progress’, the president said.
The leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) also alluded to the difficulty of being able to consummate its social and economic measures with public accounts inherited from the previous administration of the conservative Popular Party (PP).
A government has the obligation to fulfill its task, which is to approve laws and move forward, but when this is not possible due to the parliamentary blockade and the rejection of the General State Budget (PGE), decisions must be made, he said.
It considered, nevertheless, that there are ‘parliamentary defeats’, like the blockade to the PGE in the Congress of the Deputies, that are ‘social victories’, because the citizens already know which is the PSOE´s executive the road map, he considered.
I am convinced that it is possible to recover the useful policy for citizenship and turn away from the tension in this country, added the politician, in veiled reference to the resurgence of divisions by the secessionist conflict in Catalonia.
In power since June 1, Sanchez received on Wednesday the stinging criticism of the Congress of Deputies, which vetoed his first public accounts, through which he sought to reverse seven years of hard social cuts from his predecessor, the conservative Mariano Rajoy.
By 191 votes in favor, 158 against and one abstention, the Lower House challenged the plan of expenditures and income for 2019, with which the social democratic executive aspired to exhaust the current legislature, in the middle of 2020.
For different reasons, against the PGE, the right-wingers of the PP and the Citizens pronounced themselves, in addition to the Catalan independence forces Esquerra Republica (ERC) and the Catalan European Democrat Party (Pdecat).
The budget plan was supported by the Socialists, the leftist coalition Unidos Podemos and the conservative Basque Nationalist Party.
Sanchez refused to extend the inherited PGE of the administration of Rajoy, former leader of the PP, and tried to seek the support of the secessionist formations of Catalonia, which last June supported his inauguration through a successful motion of parliamentary censure.
However, ERC and Pdecat withdrew their support for the president after he declined last week to negotiate the self-determination right of the prosperous north-eastern region, which in October of 2017 carried out an ill-fated attempt to secede.
The upcoming April 28 will be the third legislative elections held by Spain in just over three years, after those made in December 2015 and June 2016.