Pedro Sánchez faces the third day of meetings with regional presidents at La Moncloa this Friday. This meeting is expected to be uncomfortable for both Génova and the head of the Government. In one day, Sánchez will meet with three of the most underfunded regions in Spain: Murcia, Valencia, and Castilla-La Mancha. The members of the PP, Fernando López Miras and Carlos Mazón, are not opposed to a future debt forgiveness, but they will first demand a reform of the regional financing system in a multilateral forum. Emiliano García-Page, one of the most vocal socialist leaders against agreements with separatists, will firmly oppose the special financing for Catalonia agreed between the PSC and ERC. They will also discuss other key issues such as water and infrastructure improvement.
The meeting of the regional leaders will take place in Madrid while the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, participates in the forum in A Toxa, Galicia. The national leadership of the PP will surely keep a close eye on the meeting at La Moncloa, where Sánchez and Mazón will meet at the same time as Feijóo’s intervention. The Valencian president is not willing to give up on debt forgiveness that was promised to Catalonia last year and later offered to other regions. Mazón will have to be careful not to upset the leader of the PP, as Feijóo has vetoed any bilateral negotiations on financing matters.
The day of meetings with Sánchez will start with López Miras, the president of Murcia, the most underfunded region in Spain. He is also open to debt forgiveness but only after the regional financing system, expired since 2014, is reformed. Both Mazón and López Miras consider any debt forgiveness without first updating the model as a mere “band-aid”. The PP regional leaders have threatened to use their authority under the Conference of Presidents’ regulations to include this issue in the agenda of the future forum in December, which Sánchez wanted to focus solely on housing. The preparatory committee for the Conference will begin on the 28th of this month, and the PP barons, meeting the minimum requirement of 10 regional presidents, can force additional issues onto the agenda.
The last meeting of the day will be with García-Page, the president of Castilla-La Mancha. Sánchez and García-Page have not met at La Moncloa since 2018 and they had a significant political rift. The Junta’s sources explain that the previous term was exceptional, with many meetings through the Conference of Presidents where they discussed issues important to the socialist baron. García-Page’s team values that Sánchez receives regional presidents at La Moncloa, unlike what happened with Mariano Rajoy. The socialist leader approaches the meeting as an “apostle of dialogue” but is against special financing for Catalonia. He believes creating a special regime is a privilege and opposes achieving this privilege piece by piece or all at once. Garcia-Page expressed this stance to the media before meeting with the President and Secretary General of his party.
