The Government will send the pertinent official communication to Congress on Friday to convene the Debate on the State of the Nation that will finally be held on July 12 and 13, extending, for the vote on the resolutions presented by the parliamentary groups, until the morning Thursday, the 14th.

In this way, after seven years of parenthesis, the great parliamentary discussion established by Felipe González in 1983 with the aim of annually submitting to an examination -except for electoral years that include investiture debate- the situation of the country in all its slopes. This will be an occasion marked by special circumstances, not only because the president heads a minority government caught in its continuous internal confrontations but, above all, because the leader of the opposition, the popular Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will not be able to take the rostrum of the Congress to reply, nor the new figure of the left, Yolanda Díaz, for being a member of the Council of Ministers.

The PP will confront Pedro Sánchez through the mouth of its parliamentary spokesperson, Cuca Gamarra. The popular ones had analyzed possible formulas so that their leader could intervene in Congress arguing his condition as a senator and, therefore, a member of a parliamentary group, but they are aware that this path will not be followed.

Under these conditions, the debate will present fewer edges for Pedro Sánchez, who will not have to maintain a face-to-face relationship with Núñez Feijóo, on the rise in all the polls, especially after the overwhelming victory of the PP in Andalusia, nor with Yolanda Díaz, the figure which aims to bring together all those who are to the left of the PSOE. It will be up to Díaz to prepare arguments on the subject of her competence to enrich Sánchez’s intervention, follow her from the blue bench and settle for applauding her.

Vox will make the absence of the PP leader profitable by trying to monopolize the opposition

These circumstances will be used by Vox to try to make Santiago Abascal appear as the main protagonist of the opposition to the Government. Paradoxically, this will redound to the benefit of the president, who feels comfortable in a dialectical melee with the leader of the radical right.

The situation in the country is not, however, favorable for Sánchez, unable so far to capitalize on his social and economic measures in favor of the working class. Those derived from the war in Ukraine, especially the runaway increase in prices that fully impacts homes and businesses, overshadow an end to the legislature that the Government expected easy thanks to the multimillion-dollar aid from the European Union. The Russian invasion has disrupted these plans.

Nor does the management of foreign policy play in his favor with all the groups willing to reproach him once again for the unilateral turn with respect to the Sahara and the consequences that this has had for relations with Algeria and in terms of immigration. Nor the defense policy, in the foreground after the NATO Summit, and in which the commitment to increase military spending is already included. Neither is the espionage with Pegasus on independence leaders and the case, still shrouded in shadow, of the hacking of the president’s phone and several ministers.

His usual partners, independentists and minorities of the radical left, will not be sparing in their reproaches in any of these areas. Even the most related are already putting their sights on the municipal and regional elections next spring and prefer to move away from the Government’s orbit.

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