Law voting day in Congress, day of tension for the Government. The parliamentary fragility of the coalition means that the demands of the governance partners -from the nationalists to even the United We Can- take the negotiations to the end, without the support seeming to be guaranteed until the end. This is the case with the Audiovisual Law, which the Plenary of Congress votes today, and which the PSOE was still negotiating late yesterday with United We Can, ERC and Bildu. It does seem clear that the sexual freedom law, known as the law of only yes is yes, which is the first major initiative of Irene Montero that is validated by the Lower House, will be approved without setbacks.
We can exhibit today, except for surprise that the Government does not foresee, one of its star laws. “Useful policy” that the purple needed to take oxygen before a PSOE that, as Pedro Sánchez evidenced this weekend, wants to monopolize the social flag of government action. Irene Montero will see, in all likelihood, how her process in Congress ends a law whose draft received the approval of the Council of Ministers for the first time on March 3, 2020.
A long, cumbersome, disputed procedure, with clashes between the two government partners, accusations of blockade between ministries, the Judiciary… Montero saw the deadlines of one of the first laws that Podemos promoted when he came to Government. The path of the law of only yes is yes has been complex until the last moment, when its approval was threatened, because the PSOE wanted to include measures aimed at the abolition of prostitution, against the rejection of its partners. That ordago was saved, after the socialists, seeing the danger that the law would decline, withdrew their claims.
The approval of the law of the only yes is yes adds to the approval that, in first reading, the Council of Ministers gave a few days ago to the new abortion law, where Montero beat the pulse of Nadia Calviño and José Luis Escrivá to include the casualties due to painful rule, not so to the Treasury with the abolition of VAT on feminine hygiene products.
Two political medals that, in addition, coincide in time with a certain distance and coldness in the relations between the Podemos ministers and Vice President Yolanda Díaz, leader of the United We Can space in the Government. A moment where the political project in which Díaz works has caused a crossroads of opinions about the weight or prominence that the purple formation should have or would like to have.
Along with the law of the only yes is yes, the Congress pronounces on two other key laws for the Government’s action: the Proposal for an Organic Law complementary to the Comprehensive Law for equal treatment and non-discrimination and the General Law Project of Audiovisual Communication. If in the first case the perspective of the Government is that there are no problems for its approval, as for the second, the PSOE saw yesterday how its partners continued without confirming their support. A technical amendment introduced by the Socialists stirred up their partners -Unidas Podemos, ERC and Bildu, Más País or Compromís- and independent producers, understanding that the text would allow the work of production companies linked to Atresmedia and Mediaset to be disguised as the work of independent companies as long as they are not for their own strings.
The partners of the PSOE, in fact, presented/displayed yesterday a last proposal to the socialists to modify the text of the norm. Socialist parliamentary sources confirmed late yesterday that negotiations were continuing to reach an agreement that would not endanger the law. Parliamentary sources explained that despite the discrepancies, they did not consider that the rule could be in danger because they had been negotiating with the nationalists. It is worth remembering the text of the famous Catalan quota for Netflix and that led to one of the many episodes of tension between the Government and the ERC.
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