Last week the National Court condemned the defendants in the so-called Gürtel case, including who was for more than 15 years treasurer of the Popular Party (PP), Luis Bárcenas.
In their considerations the judges established that this party organized and maintained a so-called B-safe box, since 1985, where funds flowed from widespread corruption. It was from that safe box that the party was actually financed.

In the same sentence, it is said that the statements by several witnesses, especially that of the then President of the Government, Mariano Rajoy, lacked veracity. The Court also condemned the party to pay more than two hundred thousand euros as beneficiary of crime funds.


The sentence has been the straw that has filled the glass of social and political patience. In addition, a few days before the judicial ruling was made, the ex-minister and former president of the autonomous community of Valencia was arrested and charged with corruption, criminal association and money laundering. In his police statements he not only acknowledged the facts but also gave new clues as to how to follow the endless route of corruption of the Popular Party.


The corruption of PP must be added to the instability of being a minority government, which forced it to constantly negotiate fundamental issues, such as the position against the sovereignty process in Catalonia, whose institutions declared an independent Republic, given the impossibility of dialogue with the government.

The police and judicial persecution of the Catalan authorities has resulted in the imprisonment of several Catalan politicians and the exile of their own President, Carles Puidgemont, and several of their ministers, in various European countries.
The same could be said of the budgets, paralysed for months, and approved in extremis, with the support of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) in exchange for 540 million euros in investments for this territory, just one day before the explosive National Court ruling.


The presentation of a motion of censure against the President by the leader of the Socialist Party (PSOE) Pedro Sanchez has finally been approved this Friday with 180 votes in favour and 169 against.

The approval of the motion of censure meant the fall of the leader of the PP. Mariano Rajoy as well as the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as the new President of the Government.
Although the PSOE has only 84 votes in Congress, the corruption scandal has had the virtue of adding support from very diverse groups such as the United Left Coalition, the Catalan indepedentists, the PNV and the Basque indepedentists from EH-Bildu, the Canary Coalition


Now the new President has the complicated task of getting a stable and agreed support with Unidos-Podemos and the PNV (which already governs in coalition with the PSOE in the Basque Autonomous Community). Likewise it will have to at least open avenues of dialogue and political relationship with the Catalans and Basques independentists.


The new government will also have to manage an annual budget, already approved, that has a strong conservative content, and politically address the complex and delicate Catalan conflict (until now addressed only with repression and the judiciary). In a not too distant future it will also have to address the demand for a new status in the relationship with the Basque Country (which is already in the negotiation and drafting phase in the Parliament of that territory).


During the parliamentary debates on Thursday, the other fundamental issues on the agenda were also clear: a firm fight against widespread corruption in politics and administration, the recovery of social policies, and curbing the repressive and judicial drift that has prevailed during the Government of the PP.


As if all the above was not enough, the new President should also wear ‘silk gloves’ with his own party, especially with the so-called barons, the powerful group of notables composed of two Socialist ex-presidents and their regional leaders, closely linked to the "old policy" that has been criticized harshly in the parliamentary debate.


The new Government will possibly have a limited life, before the call for early elections is made. But it will try to gain enough time to carry out a "progressive" political and economic management that will allow both the PSOE and Unidos-Podemos to address future elections in better conditions. The latest polls, in fact, indicate a remarkable growth of the rightist and pro-centralist Ciudadanos, which will benefit most from the crisis of the conservative PP.