Andalucía to Form a 'Progressive' Government

While the finer details remain unclear, the PSOE and the IU have agreed to form a government 'of maximum stability' for Andalucía for the next four years after a key vote by 6,000 IU party members agreed last Tuesday to support the plan. Reacting to the news, 'a radical government is very bad for Andalucía' said the leader of the party with the most seats, Javier Arenas, leader of the Andalucian PP, who agrees with José Bono (the Socialist ex President of Congress) that the PSOE should have pacted instead with the PP.

Such a pact between the PSOE and the PP was always going to be unlikely. The remaining alternatives would have been a minority government of the PP or the support by the IU of the PSOE candidature for president of the autonomy but without entering into a coalition. The IU coordinator Diego Valderas has supported a full partnership, while the thorn-in-the-side Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, mayor of Marinaleda and now Andalucian parliamentarian, is strongly against any alliance which, he says, would spell the end of IU – ‘We must emphasize our anti-capitalist character and not climb into the sinking ship of the PSOE’.
Thus, with the support of the IU, the candidature of José Antonio Griñán as president of the Junta de Andalucía in the presidential debates on the May 2nd and 3rd new parliamentary session, followed by the investiture is now assured. In deliberations leading up to this situation, the PSOE had agreed to the ‘minimum conditions’ of the IU (the ‘Izquierda Unida Los Verdes-Convocatoria por Andalucía’ to give it its full name - a loose coalition of far-left groups dominated by the Partido Comunista de España). These are the departure of those civil servants in the Junta de Andalucía connected to the estimated 700 million euro ERE fraud (the Ex-Councillor for Employment was jailed without bail on Monday for his part in the scandal); the creation of a ‘public bank for Andalucía’ to manage seed money for small and medium businesses; the prohibition of evictions by foreclosures of the banks (a petition will need to be sent to the Central Government in Madrid, which has the power to implement or otherwise this); a basic income for all Andalucian families and the offer of four months of public scat-work for the unemployed. Furthermore, agreements have been reached to increase taxes, introduce fresh wealth taxes, inheritance and gift taxes, and to implement an environmental and tax-fraud watch.

So, it remains merely to see which departments of the new government will come under the IU. My guess - they'll take the department of the environment (watch out foreign home-owners with ‘illegal’ dwellings) and some other major department. 

Later (From The Entertainer Online):  The cake - or is it a pie? - has now been carved up between the IU and the PSOE in the new Andalucian Government. The junior partner Izquierda Unida to take control of public works and housing (watch out 'illegal property' owners) and - of all things - tourism. Diego Valderas (IU) will become the vice-president of José Antonio Griñán's Junta de Andalucía.