“Today we are threading the needle”, warned Moncloa and the leadership of the PSOE yesterday, after Pedro Sánchez had accepted the task of Felipe VI the day before to try to articulate a parliamentary majority that endorses his investiture as to president of the Spanish government. And with the pretense, moreover, that the same majority in Congress guarantees stability for the entire legislature to a new progressive coalition executive. First of all, with general State budgets for next year.
Sánchez got to work on it immediately, with two relevant appointments. With the leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, in the morning, to start putting the future government coalition on track. And with the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, in the afternoon, to stage a common front before the complex negotiation with Catalan independence, essential for the success of the investiture and the viability of the legislature.
For all issues related to Catalonia, and therefore to achieve agreements with both ERC and Junts, the leader of the PSOE “will be in permanent coordination” with the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, as announced yesterday by the spokeswoman of the executive of Ferraz, the minister Pilar Alegría.
Sánchez and Illa, to display this strengthened alliance, met in the afternoon at the headquarters of the PSOE in Madrid, and contacts between the two “will be maintained during the coming weeks on a permanent basis”.
It is not the first time that Sánchez has turned to Illa to try to successfully conclude negotiations in the always complex Catalan political scene, now aggravated by the struggle between ERC and Junts to make profitable an eventual investiture of the leader of the PSOE in front of their respective electorates and the entire pro-independence field. The winner of the last Catalan elections, and current head of the opposition in Parliament, was already part, together with Adriana Lastra and José Luis Ábalos, of the negotiating team designated by Sánchez for the talks with ERC before the previous investiture of the leader of the PSOE. The Republicans’ abstention on that occasion allowed Sánchez to be inaugurated in January 2020.
Now, Sánchez is not only looking for the favorable vote of ERC, but also of Junts, to successfully crown the King’s commission, which is why everything points to the fact that the desire will be even more difficult to satisfy.
The prominence that Sánchez gives to Illa, before the new negotiations, is also a clear message for Junts and ERC. Faced with the bilateral dialogue tables requested by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, the leader of the PSC demands that a broad dialogue between all the Catalan political forces is also articulated to face the political conflict in Catalonia.
The PSOE, for the moment, is demanding the same “generosity” that Sánchez offers, in implicit reference to an amnesty for those accused of the process and to the renunciation of unilateralism by the formation led by Carles Puigdemont. “Generosity is that all the political forces do their part, and that they are aware that we must advance in the economic field, in the social field, in coexistence, in rights and in equality”, pointed out the Minister of the Presidency acting, Félix Bolaños. “Generosity is that we are all aware that we have to do our part to close wounds and open a new stage”, remarked Bolaños.
