Congress votes this Tuesday on the decree extending the rent price freeze for two years. The rule proposed by Sumar, which also includes an extraordinary limitation on the annual update of rents, is expected to fail with the rejection of PP, Vox, and Junts, despite the Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, having opened up to concessions to the separatists in recent hours. Meanwhile, in Aragon, the intervention of the PP candidate for the Presidency, Jorge Azcón, will begin this Tuesday in the Cortes the debate for his investiture for the second time and after having closed a government pact with Vox. This is the second government pact with Santiago Abascal’s party, which, however, abandoned the regional executive in the previous legislature and with whom it was not possible to reach a budgetary agreement, which led to the early elections.
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Azcón offers his investiture speech this Tuesday, after the PP sealed its second pact with Vox, with “national priority” at the center of the debate
The PP candidate for the Aragon elections and acting president, Jorge Azcón, will deliver his investiture speech today from 10 in the morning at the headquarters of the regional Cortes, the Aljafería Palace in Zaragoza. The corridors of the regional Parliament are already bustling at this hour with the comings and goings of journalists, security agents, and political officials just minutes before the session begins. For now, no protests have been registered in the vicinity of the building, as did happen in Mérida during María Guardiola’s investiture plenary session and after the popular party accepted “national priority” in the first government pact with Vox of this electoral carousel. The same concept was reintroduced in the Aragonese agreement, which will focus the group debate. Today only Azcón will speak, and tomorrow the rest of the parties will respond, in addition to the vote taking place. The PP baron is expected to be elected by 40 votes in favor: 26 from his party —which dropped two seats in the elections on February 8— and 14 from the far-right —which, on the contrary, doubled its result—.
PUJOL CASE
No solid corruption leads and now without a ‘president’: the Pujol trial reaches its final stretch deflated
The judicial process against the Pujol family has lacked testimonies that would pull back the curtain (if there is a curtain to pull back) and has had too much time. Unlike other cases of alleged political corruption, no one has spoken up to acknowledge, even belatedly and to reduce their sentence, undue payments in exchange for public contracts which, by the way, are neither present nor expected in the trial. The delays in the process —23 years since Jordi Pujol left the presidency of the Generalitat, 14 since his eldest son’s businesses began to be investigated— have also not helped to clarify the alleged network of influences woven by the family under the protection of the former president. The maximum thesis of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (that the money hidden in Andorra comes from corruption) remains without solid evidence, a circumstance to which has now been added, in the final stretch, the disappearance of Pujol himself from the trial, incapacitated to face a criminal process and now exempt from any responsibility.
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Video | The Kitchen trial, awaiting one of the PP’s worst nightmares
Chief Inspector Manuel Morocho, the main investigator of the Gürtel case, thus denounced the “pressures” to boycott the case that surrounded the popular party.
Popular Party
The PP commissions a survey to measure the impact of “national priority” amid the noise of its pact with Vox
Given the intense noise that the “national priority” agreed with Vox in the government agreements of Extremadura and Aragon has caused the PP, Génova has made a move. The popular leadership has measured the impact of the measure with a survey specifically commissioned to find out how voters value the idea of prioritizing Spaniards over immigrants in access to public aid, according to sources from the popular leadership told EL PAÍS.
Read more Morante and David de Miranda win the main awards of the April Fair
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column
National priority
The PP and Vox pacts in Extremadura and Aragon have made national priority the concept of spring. But the practical implementation of this phrase, which sounds like the name of a punk band from the Movida, with echoes of the French National Front and a racist undertone, varies depending on which of its signatory promoters explains it. The underlying message, however, is clear. Spaniards (and Spanish women, I imagine) must come before immigrants (and immigrant women, undoubtedly) in access to the welfare state. But how is this done?
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RENTAL HOUSING
PP, Vox and Junts prepare to overturn the rent extension despite Sumar’s last effort
The progressive coalition government of PSOE and Sumar will most likely suffer another parliamentary defeat this Tuesday on a matter of utmost political sensitivity when the validation of the rent extension approved by the Council of Ministers a month ago is voted on. Sumar has made this measure a cause to alleviate the consequences of the war in Iran for hundreds of thousands of tenants: it first pressured the PSOE to promote the decree and in recent days directly Junts, even to the point of yielding on possible tax improvements for self-employed workers and landlords. Without success. The PP will not save the government this time either. Both Junts and Sumar point out that the PSOE has not been fully involved in this negotiation. The socialists indicate that Junts has decided to overturn the decree from day one for ideological reasons and there is nothing to be done.
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Good morning. We begin the live narration of the latest political news, this Tuesday, April 28. Congress votes this afternoon on the decree extending the rent price freeze for two years. The rule proposed by Sumar, which also includes an extraordinary limitation on the annual update of rents, is expected to fail with the rejection of PP, Vox, and Junts, despite the Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, having opened up to concessions to the separatists in recent hours.
The Council of Ministers meeting this Tuesday addresses the monitoring report of the fiscal plan to be sent to Brussels and is expected to approve the draft bill for the reform of the occupational risk prevention law.</p
Meanwhile, the National Court continues the trial for Operation Kitchen, the alleged parapolice plot to spy on former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas. In this Tuesday’s session, Civil Guard Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos, responsible for controlling reserved funds in the Ministry of Interior when they were allegedly used for that espionage, will testify. The National Court also continues the trial for the hidden fortune in Andorra of the family of former Catalan president Jordi Pujol Soley with the continuation of the testimony of the eldest son, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola.
In Aragon, the PP candidate for the Presidency, Jorge Azcón, will undergo the investiture debate starting this Tuesday after having closed a government pact with Vox.
