For the Manual of Resistance that of the Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti, who was seven times the Christian Prime Minister of Italy, and ended up titled one of his books with his most famous phrase: “Power wears down, but it is better not to lose it”. This political truth can be noted in the accounts of Pedro Sánchez’s party.
The PSOE is already in a position to settle, for the first time, the federally contracted bank debt by the Executive and regain full ownership of its Ferraz headquarters, which was mortgaged on loans from the past to shore up the accounts. This is confirmed to this daily by sources of PSOE management eight years after the party surrounded the accounting disaster. when, after an electoral debacle, it had to borrow an additional syndicated loan of up to 16 million to finance an ERE and its own operation. Have there been controversial credit forgiveness again as in Zapatero’s stage in power? Indications of Filesa as in the era of Felipe González? Does the Secretary of Organization, José Luis Abalos,who is coincidentally also Minister of Transport and Mobility, take advantage of donations from construction companies as in other times? The PSOE describes the situation much simpler and not more criminally: “a revenue improvement and prudent management”.
A first milestone is to deshipotecar Ferraz’s headquarters. “The loan has already been paid and there is only a need to write the mortgage lift”, confirm the aforementioned sources of management that Mariano Moreno runs. Moreover, they say that either month, the party’s central bank debt will already be reduced to just 4.8 million which, with the 2020 surplus and outstanding electoral subsidies, can be settled shortly. Fernando Grande Marlaska’s Ministry of the Interior owes the PSOE plus 7 million outstanding election grants from 2019.
Behind these operations there will still be bank debt from the territories, some 15 million, but no longer from the central organization, which, given the resistance of banks to lend to parties, already prefers to finance themselves with other formulas such as the green microcredits it has launched paying 3% APR. Attention, because with this sanitation the PSOE is placed in a competitive position to contest future elections in contrast to the delicate financial situation in which the PP has remained. In addition, it will lose its current financial dependence of Banco Santander, BBVA and CaixaBank that make up the bulk of that key syndicated loan and that expires in 2025 with an annual interest rate of more than 3%.
The plan is to liquidate it shortly, although these banks require an early repayment fee for the loan. Sanchez wants to appear before the next PSOE Congress in 2021 by erasing at least the party’s federal debt, which started very badly. In 2015 and 2016, the debt exceeded 70 million, of which more than 40 of the Federal Executive. Not attaining power and the sail then of Podemos passed a bill. But the landscape began to change in 2018. After winning the motion of censure there was a first effect of improvement through the contributions of public office. The famous revolutionary tax for which militants in positions of relevance in ministries, communities, town halls or public companies donate part of their salary to the party and what were only five million annually for this concept in 2015 in all administrations went on to be around eight million. Militancy also began to pay fees more seriously.
In addition, the year of so many elections won has led to a sharp increase in subsidies for current SPENDING from the federal PSOE, from 29.8 million in 2018 to 34.3 million last year. Elections have also been an injection of 52 million, according to official party data. And it’s not just been income. Following the lesson of the disaster of the 2011 elections and the wasteof Amy Martin, friends and family at the defunp Fundación Ideas, successive managers Gregorio Martínez and Mariano Moreno, have tried to budget election campaigns below the legal ceiling, sell real estate and put tenders from suppliers to competitive competition. The PSOE keeps for sale another headquarters, that of Gobelas, which does still have mortgaged, but no longer sees cobwebs in its coffers. How important it would be for Sanchez to do the same with those of the state, but there is the opposite and getting worse.
The ephemeris
Seven years after the creation in Spain of the so-called bad bank Sareb to free financial institutions from their worst brick at a good price in a taxpayer-backed instrument, the idea returns, but on a larger scale. The president of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank (ECB), Andrea Enria, has relaunched in an article in the Financial Times his old proposal to create a European bad bank, because he fears that this pandemic will generate credits of dubious collection worth 1.4 trillion euros. That is, above the trillion that the top 121 banks in the Eurozone came to generate in the previous financial crisis. The ghost of a new problem in the financial sector extends and surprises Spanish banking more healed than then, but in line in capitalization. That’s why the merger of CaixaBank and Bankia is so defensive and there will be more.
The character
The still president of Aigs de Catalunya investigated for bleaching and other crimes in support of the process, David Madí, maintains good contacts, even though his loss of influence has been parallel to that of his former boss Artur Mas. According to the research, he helped Carles Puigdemont, who had him in his circle for the dream of “setting up new banks or buying the Engineer’s Box”. At the same time, Madí remains connected to the financial elite through, among others, his billionaire uncle, Telefónica’s former counsel, Carles Colomer. This, good friend of Isidro Fainé, has provided Madí with “valuable information” for Agbar’s purchase in coincidence with The Caixa chief’s desire to remove her from the Suez group, according to conversations recorded by the police. Madí was an adviser to Endesa or Telefónica in Mas’s time of power and, at the very least, entangled, although the judge believes that more than tangling.
To keep going
The Fundación la Caixa and Reale Seguros sponsor a new extraordinary chair of the Complutense University called Competitive Social Transformation. It is about promoting “initiatives that connect the business with social reality” and will be led by no less than Begoña Gómez, the wife of the President of the Government, as the sponsors accept in a very striking decision. At one event on Friday, the new director Gómez noted that “this chair arises as a demand of society, so that the work of companies is not only a maximisation of the result accounts, but seek the increase of the welfare state”. It is a question of promoting the emerge of “transformative leaders” and “thinking of new models that allow capitalism to be restored”, because companies “are more attractive” if they connect with society. That’s what the statement says.
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