Splashing the cash

It’s election time in Spain and there is suddenly no shortage of cash.

Pedro Sánchez. | Efe | MADRID

Humphrey CarterPalma03/02/2023 06:00

All of a sudden ruling parties at both local and national level in Spain are flush with public funds which, for the most part, are being hastily spent of pretty hare-brained schemes. Inside sources have told me in Palma that the current administration is not only trying to buy as many votes as possible with a range of new investment projects but also trying to spend all of the money so should it lose the local elections at the end of May, the new administration will find the coffers empty.

The trouble is that, according to the latest polls, the local elections in the Balearics could go down to the wire and a tri-party right-wing body could end up in power.

And looking at the grand scheme of things in Madrid, the atmosphere is starting to get a little tasty. While Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s leftist coalition government is set to approve an 8% rise to the national minimum wage, tensions in parliament this week were running high and got rather personal.

The opposition are taking the PM to task over his “over inflated ego” and for “spending too much time looking in the mirror” while Sanchez told the leader of the opposition Partido Popular, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, that in Galicia, where he was regional president, “with your departure from the Xunta, the Galicians have won and all Spaniards have lost”.

What is ironic is that Feijóo once voted for the Sanchez’s Socialist Party under Felipe González; he did not join the Partido Popular until 2002. So one must wonder where his true political beliefs lie. Whatever happens in Palma, it’s going to take a momentous effort to beat Sanchez, but it’s going to get nasty.