Madrid wears a gray uniform these autumn days. When the sky loses its blue, the Spanish capital is shown in the plum color of the State. Then it seems that the stone facades of Colmenar weigh more, as if everything is hierarchical around a city founded on power. Under this gray of fog and rain we lived the setting of the investiture debate, and also the preparatory antechamber of silences and conspiracies, which were neutralized yesterday at noon by the democratic force of 179 votes.

Pedro Sánchez has won and is full president. Even with more margin than other times. For this reason, since yesterday all the Castilian machinery of the State has been put under his command with the full legitimacy that he gives to publish the BOE and spend a budget without being in office. However, what has happened these days in October and November has been engraved on the gray stone of the official buildings and nothing will erase it. At least, for now.

The bitter clash between Sánchez and Feijóo that we experienced during the investiture will be constantly repeated in the coming months. None of them will give in, because they look strong. The crossing of words has been very hard between the two. Gray steel sheathed politely, but knives that report that both of them have a life in this. They are waiting for each other and this means that the legislature has started under unusual tension. Agitated, moreover, because it is subject to a condition. It is not temporary, but linked to fulfilling the commitments to negotiate an amnesty law, an agreed referendum and a fiscal concert for Catalonia. Others of lesser weight are added, which are taken for granted, although they will require time. What will happen with Rodalies.

Under this sword of Damocles, also gray, of advancing these commitments in exchange for budgets, it will be necessary to negotiate three ways. I say three, because Junts and ERC hate each other as much as Sánchez and Feijóo. We will see it with the amendments to the amnesty that Junts will present and the opposition that will be raised by ERC and the PSOE itself, which knows that shielding the amnesty from the Constitutional Court depends on not leaving the perimeter of its legal foundations.

This test will be the first test. Then more will come, more and more hurried by the election appointments. Something that will also weigh on the PP, which will not be able to rely on the inertia of events and the lack of stability projected by the majority of the investiture. Insist that the PSOE governs at the expense of the majority of the PP, he will have to prove it at the polls. Improving in the Basque Country and winning in the Europeans. Something he will not achieve by riding on the inertia of the indignation of the street, because Vox will beat him more and more. The presence of Tucker Carlson portends that Madrid will be a laboratory for the reactionary international that shakes the liberal democracies. Therefore, Feijóo will have to do something more than take advantage of the discomfort of this Madrid in gray that expects revenge. We don’t know what, but wait. Like a breath on the neck of the protagonists of a debate in which Sánchez and Feijóo demonstrated, like everyone in the chamber, that they had not read Machado. This is how we go, because no one is able to implore: “¿Tu verdad? No, the truth, and come with me to look for her”.