The debate on the electoral advance has been open for many months in Andalusia, but the leak of a conversation behind closed doors of the vice president of the Board, Juan Marín (Citizens), in which he described as “stupid” to approve the budget of the community to 2022 in electoral year has intensified the debate in the Andalusian PP on the convenience of the advance. “It will be difficult to endure like this,” say several leaders of the Popular Party in Andalusia, who describe the situation in Ciudadanos, their coalition partner, as “chaotic”.

Marín’s statements in June before his parliamentary group have exploded the Andalusian government’s strategy that it would negotiate until “exhaustion” an agreement with the parliamentary groups to approve the “most social budgets in history”. And he has put on a tray to the PSOE the argument he was looking for to give up some negotiations that were already limping. Also, to Vox, which has been demanding the electoral advance for months.

Marín was recorded that speech – they assure from Cs that there are more talks collected -, in which he uses a comfortable language typical of a meeting of party colleagues, although already at that time the internal coexistence in the parliamentary group was far and far from be friendly. “We have to see if we as a government are interested in approving the 2022 Budgets in an electoral year. In an election year, can we afford to present a budget? I do not think so. It’s stupid. No government approves budgets in the last year of the legislature, but not because it cannot approve them, but simply because they are not interested in approving them and that is why they are extended, nothing more, ”says Marín in the recording advanced by Cadena SER.

The vice president explained at the meeting of the Governing Council, chaired by Juan Manuel Moreno, the context in which he made those statements. He assured that in June the forecasts of income from the central government to prepare the Andalusian accounts pointed downward and that he was in favor of the extension before taking forward a Budget with cuts. The scenario, he commented, changed in September as a result of the concretion of European funds that represent almost 6,000 million euros more. This was the explanation that Marín gave inside and outside the Government. The argument was signed by the Minister of the Presidency, Elías Bendodo, and the Minister of the Treasury, Juan Bravo: “This is a political conversation in June when the economic circumstances were different,” said Bendodo, who insisted that the unity of the Executive. “The Andalusian Government is a single Government with a single voice and wants there to be a budget,” he said. Marín plans to attend as a guest next Saturday the Andalusian PP congress in which Moreno will be re-elected regional president.

Sources close to Marín attribute the leak to an “attempt to pressure” Juan Manuel Moreno to advance the Andalusian elections. If the entire mandate is exhausted, these would not touch until November 2022. The cited sources attribute to the former secretary of Cs Organization, Fran Hervías, now in the ranks of the PP, the filtration maneuver, an insinuation that Hervías denied to this newspaper . The audios have been revealed 48 hours before the deadline for the presentation of the amendments to all the Andalusian accounts expires and when from the meeting held on Monday between the Board and the PSOE-A there was some hint, albeit remote, of to be able to start the abstention of the Socialists, and in the same week in which Moreno will be reelected president of the Andalusian PP. The popular leader attended a regional congress in which he was going to be able to show off his stability as head of the first non-socialist Executive in Andalusia, in the midst of the dispute between Genoa and the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz-Ayuso, for organic power in that community.

However, in the Andalusian PP the debate on the electoral advance generates division. There are deputies and leaders who are clearly, albeit anonymously, committed to calling Andalusian elections if the Budget return amendments are successful on November 24 and the Government has to go to the budget extension. They bet on the end of February or the beginning of March to put the ballot boxes.

These leaders believe that the legislature is already over and that the internal situation of Citizens “in a state of KO” and the risk of a parliamentary blockade of the Government’s initiatives advise to clear up doubts about the electoral date as soon as possible. “It will be difficult to endure,” said several members of the PP in unison yesterday. The leadership of Pablo Casado’s PP is also in favor of the advance because it believes that a good result in Andalusia, as predicted by all polls, would reinforce its image as a winning party against the PSOE.

But the president of the Board, the only one authorized to sign the decree of dissolution of Parliament, is of the opinion that the mandate must be exhausted. Moreno, who was critical of the advances of the socialist governments, believes that fully complying with the legislature is not a cliché, but must be an electoral commitment. However, Moreno has been open to pressing the red button in case opposition groups stop the approval of decree-laws and pending legislative projects such as the Tax Law. He already warned about this in the recent debate on the state of the community when he affirmed that if this blockade occurs “they will push the Government into a dead end.”