Feijóo failed by not obtaining the 176 votes that represent the absolute majority, and falling short of four votes. The vote will be repeated on Friday, forty-eight hours after the first vote, when it will only need more yeses than noes, which it will probably not achieve, since compared to its 176 seats it will obtain, like today, 178 votes, from PSOE, Sumar and Basque, Catalan and BNG nationalists and independentists.
With this vote, Alberto Núñez Feijóo gives way to a possible investiture of Pedro Sánchez, who will need the support of all the parties that this Wednesday voted against the PP candidate, for which the secessionists of ERC and Junts have already made their demands, amnesty and a self-determination referendum, as confirmed yesterday by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, in the general policy debate held in the Parliament of Catalonia.
With this failure, Alberto Núñez Feijóo emerges as leader of the opposition in a legislature that is still not clear if it can get underway. In fact, with the non-election of the PP candidate the electoral clock starts, since if a candidate is not installed before November 27, elections will be held again on January 14.
But the investiture debate has served a purpose. Alberto Núñez Feijóo has consolidated himself as the leader of his party, if he needed that consolidation. The popular ones are delighted not only with the speech and the government program presented by the president of the PP, but also with the way the popular president handles himself in his responses to the different parties.
If already on Tuesday, in the first debate session, Feijóo realized that if there was any remote possibility that those four votes he was missing could join the PP, in this Wednesday’s session it was confirmed with the intervention of the candidate of the PNV, Aitor Esteban, the party in which the popular people placed the hope of being able to achieve, in some way, the majority necessary to govern.
Aitor Esteban reminded the PP that its support is incompatible with that of Vox, therefore the formula that Feijóo proposed that if he wanted he could be president, giving in to the demands of Junts, is not true. Esteban reminded him that to have the support of the five PNV deputies he has to give up the 33 votes of Vox, therefore he does not have that majority.
The PNV spokesperson also contrasted the ideology of the PP with that of the Basque nationalists. “There is a Basque nation aware of itself. We are a nation” and in that sense it cannot accept one of the measures announced by Feijóo, that of “returning to judicial means”, with the crime of constitutional disloyalty, which goes even deeper. the abyss that exists between the PP and the PNV.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who, like on Tuesday, responded jointly to EH Bildu and the PNV. A joint but differentiated response, because the popular leader made it clear that he wants nothing with Bildu, and that is why he despises the accusations of the spokesperson for the Abertzale party who went back to the Franco regime to draw a retrograde PP.
“I know you know us well, they have had many colleagues from the PP in their sights,” remembering Bildu’s heritage with parties that supported ETA. For this reason, he stressed, “what Bildu says has no value for me, if it is not preceded by the condemnation of terrorism” and added, “I leave Bildu’s votes to Mr. Sánchez.” What’s more, Feijóo considers that “Bildu is the only party in Spain that should have a cordon sanitaire.”
He addressed the PNV in a different way: “I respect the PNV, not Bildu. They are different parties,” although he believes that with his alliances with Sánchez, there is “a new PNV.” But he warned Ortuzar’s party about its alliances with the PSOE, in the company of Bildu, because “Bildu is beginning to beat the PNV.”
The last party to intervene was the PP. His spokesperson, Cuca Gamarra, who had continuous references to Pedro Sánchez. “What he is willing to do is sell Spain, in order to gain a personal interest.” He also summoned the acting president and his possible agreements with the independentists. “If they want to change the state model, bring to Congress a reform of the Constitution, but do not use shortcuts, as they have done with the use of languages ??in Congress.”
The debate was finally closed by the candidate, who once again turned to Pedro Sánchez, to reproach him for not responding to him in Tuesday’s debate. “He has preferred to escape so as not to tell the truth about his negotiations, the demands to which he is subject, his position on the amnesty”, to underline “Whoever remains silent grants, Mr. Sánchez, and we will see the intensity of his silence and what he grants and what they demand.”
Feijóo made the reply that he did not make on Tuesday to Sánchez’s absence. “He did not go up to the platform because he could not defend what he defended just two months ago in front of all the Spaniards.” The popular candidate, despite knowing that he will not become president, accepted the debate as good, saying, “we have all portrayed ourselves, with our words and our silences,” in clear reference to the non-intervention of the acting president.
Furthermore, his satisfaction because “it has been demonstrated that there is an alternative to the model of blackmail and concessions to those who do not believe in our country.” Despite his defeat, Feijóo comes out with his head held high. “We can leave with our principles and those of eleven million voters intact. I leave with my word and that of 11 million Spaniards intact. I leave with my political and personal integrity intact.”
