Since this Tuesday, the PSOE has one less deputy in its parliamentary group, and the Mixed Group, with one more, with the abrupt departure of the former Minister of Transport and former Secretary of the Socialist Organization José Luis Ábalos, announced in a long-awaited appearance in the Congress. With this, there are already two times that the group – which includes deputies who are not part of the groups associated with parties – has grown so far in the legislature. In December, the five Podemos seats broke away from Sumar’s group and joined it – then one of its members, Lilith Verstrynge, resigned from her membership – following breaking with the electoral platform of Yolanda Díaz, with which They had participated in the general elections of July 23.
Now, Ábalos will join a political miscellany of eight deputies of which, in addition to the four former members of Sumar, one from the Navarro People’s Union (UPN), another from the Canarian Coalition (CC) and another from the Galician Nationalist Bloc are part. (BNG). In a legislature marked by the complex arithmetic of support for a parliamentary minority government, Ábalos’ departure from the socialist sphere portends an even more complicated scenario for achieving majorities.
The former socialist minister will keep his office and will continue to receive the same allowance that corresponded to him as a deputy: 3,142.14 euros per month, but, following resigning on Monday as president of the House’s Interior Commission, he will lose the 1,598.13 euros additional benefits to which he was entitled in terms of representation expenses and also the assistant, both benefits associated with the position.
As a deputy for Valencia, and therefore, not resident in Madrid, he will continue to have the right to a monthly compensation of 2,018.41 euros to cover expenses, free of taxation, and will also have, as he does not have an official vehicle, a card to spend up to 3,000 euros a year in taxis.
Like the rest of the groups, the Mixed Group receives a joint subsidy of 30,346.72 euros per month, to which something more will now be added, because that amount is supplemented with another sum depending on the number of deputies of 1,746.16 euros. monthly for each parliamentarian—a total of 15,715.44 euros—and, consequently, the Socialist Group will lose that sum, going from 121 to 120 members. The Joint Group has the right to appoint assistants, as long as there is no more than one per deputy, and has the power to appoint a coordinator.
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The new Mixed Group will be made up of two former ministers who at some point were part of or were associated with the current forces that constitute the Executive: Ione Belarra, head of Social Affairs in the previous legislature, and now, Ábalos. Currently, the group is made up of Belarra, general secretary of Podemos, and her party colleagues Javier Sánchez Serna, Martina Velarde and Noemí Santana; and by Alberto Catalán (UPN), Cristina Valido (CC) and Néstor Rego (BNG).
Podemos spoke out this Tuesday regarding its new partner in the chamber, but before he announced his move to the Mixed Group. The co-spokesman of the formation, Sánchez Serna, has assured that the Koldo case It is not resolved solely with Ábalos as a “scapegoat”: “This must be investigated thoroughly, that the issue is not exhausted with a scapegoat, who might be Ábalos and who can resign or not, but goes further (… .). During the worst of the pandemic there were those who took advantage of public contracts to obtain illegal commissions on the sale of masks,” he said.
In this legislature, the now independent deputy has barely appeared on the Congress platform. He intervened in the debate on a PP motion once morest the amnesty law in December, and also asked a collective question to the Government regarding the delays in the collection of taxes in January in some Valencian municipalities. The change of group also implies the change of seat: from being seated in the socialist group, in the right third of the chamber and in the third row, next to the former socialist spokesperson Adriana Lastra, Ábalos will now move to the central third, but to the seventh row, the second furthest from the tribune, and will sit between Néstor Rego (BNG, also in the Mixed Group) and the Vox deputy for Málaga Carlos Quero. In the back row, there are other deputies from the right-wing party and, in the front row, those from Bildu.
The new Mixed Group with Ábalos in it is not especially numerous compared to the historical average, which has been an average of 10 deputies from the constituent legislature to the XV, the current one. The largest occurred at the end of the 1st legislature, in 1982, with 20 members; the least, at the beginning of the IX, in 2008, with only four. So far in the Cortes that emerged from 23-J, the Mixed Group has presented, alone or together with other groups, 10 law proposals.
Ábalos will have to agree with his group mates on his time quota. Those of the Mixed Group are the same as those of the rest of the groups, as long as their member deputies agree. But it has its peculiarity: if this consensus does not occur, none of its members will be able to speak for more than a third of the total assigned, and only a maximum of three deputies will be able to speak at a time. If that third of the time assigned to the group is less than five minutes, the limit of interventions will be only two deputies, and each one will be able to speak only half of the allotted time.
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