The President of the Government of Cantabria, María José Sáenz de Buruaga (PP), has defended that the Executive has fulfilled its legal obligation by registering the Budget Bill "in time and form" and has reiterated her intention to push it through, stressing that it has "the vocation of dialogue" to open a negotiation process in Parliament.
However, she has stressed that to close an agreement "at least two parties are needed" and has urged the PRC to state whether it will support the accounts —as it has been doing during the legislature— or whether, on the contrary, it "is going to stop the progress of Cantabria out of pure electioneering interest and partisan strategy". Along these lines, she has insisted that, if the budget is finally not approved, "it will not be because the Government has not fulfilled its obligations nor because Cantabria has not been taken seriously".
The head of the Executive made these statements in the afternoon session of the Parliament plenary, when responding to a question raised by the PRC, reiterating her request to the regionalists to clarify whether they will facilitate the approval of the accounts, although she warned that "the signals they have been sending for months do not invite optimism".
"I want to approve the accounts for 2027, what government would not want to do so", she emphasized.
From the regionalist benches, Paula Fernández reproached the Government for having registered the budget project "without first negotiating with those it needs for them to be approved".
"What is not legitimate is to govern from arrogance, asking for support, without capacity for agreement and condemning our land to uncertainty", Fernández asserted, who defended that the PRC has maintained throughout the legislature "an impeccable institutional responsibility" and accused the PP of having treated the regionalist formation with "an intolerable contempt".
At this point, she added that the 'populars' had called them "dirty, with an incredible lack of institutional elegance". "What political shamelessness to resort to that vile word game", said the PRC candidate for the Presidency, alluding to the Monitoring Commission and the PP's "noncompliance" with the budget agreement.
Sign on the forehead and accusations of blockade
In the face of these criticisms, Buruaga has replied to the regionalist leader that "all that is missing is for him to put up a sign on his forehead: For electoral reasons, Cantabria will not have a budget for 2027. Socialist voters, come to me, come to me... They have spent weeks sowing doubts and looking for excuses to justify the no," she said, to maintain that the PRC has settled into the 'no' to "absolutely everything: to the Teacher Authority Law, to the Housing Law, to the draft law on heritage, the PSIR...", she listed.
"They are on a strategy of blocking the Government, the budgets, and the 'no' to everything," Buruaga reiterated, who was ironic in affirming that the Monitoring Commission had been "a pantomime that they had already prepared from the first day."
The president has described that attitude as "politics of spectacle" and has censured that the "supposed experts" appointed by the PRC "have nothing independent about them." "The PRC put them to sign off on the conclusions that the PRC has provided, without ever contrasting them with ours. That is, unilateral conclusions and with more cooking than Tezanos's CIS," she criticized.
Buruaga has asked the regionalists to abandon the "balancing acts" and to state "with absolute clarity" whether they are willing to agree on the budgets, "because neither the people of Cantabria nor this Government are now here to waste time."
"Let's make one thing clear: I am not Sánchez. I am not going to allow blackmail and, of course, I am not going to turn Cantabria into a Persian market. Cantabria and the people of Cantabria are not going to pay for your desire to be the center of attention ahead of the municipal and regional elections, and I am also not going to back down on a single one of the reforms that are allowing Cantabria to be transformed because you have decided to put on the Cantabrianist jacket (...), while dressing as a socialist and clinging to a banner on days of official mourning," she conveyed to Fernández.
To conclude, the president has warned the PRC that, if it wants its proposals to be considered, "they will have to come accompanied by rigor and solutions, and the willingness to reach an agreement," and she reiterated that, if the accounts do not go through, "it will not be because this Government has not fulfilled its obligations or has not taken Cantabria seriously."
"I recommend to him (Fernández) that he not make the Cantabrians hostages of his political ambitions and that he stop making excuses, because this time you are not going to have a second chance like with the 2026 budget. If the budget does not come into force on January 1, it will be the citizens who decide it at the ballot box. I know perfectly well what my situation is; what I am not so clear about is that you know what yours is," Buruaga concluded.