Elías Bendodo, Cuca Gamarra, Esteban González Pons, Borja Sémper… Yesterday the PP deployed the potential of a good part of its national spokesmen to make official its willingness to sit down from Monday with all the political groups with parliamentary representation to achieve the necessary supports for the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo with the exception of EH Bildu, to which he will extend a veto that, on the contrary, he has lifted in Junts.
Once the King’s order was accepted the day before, the concatenation of messages from the general coordinator, the general secretary and the vice secretaries of political action and open society, respectively, were dosed on radios and televisions for, like the Chinese drop , try to take root both in the territorial structure of the party and in its militancy.
The most eloquent was Pons. Despite acknowledging that “Feijóo is having a very difficult time, because he is not prepared for everything to govern”, he certified that the PP will not go to the investiture “as if it were an insubstantial or publicity procedure”.
The deputy secretary of political action defended dialogue as a tool for the construction of an alternative government to that of Sánchez at the Onda Cero microphones. And, for this purpose, he offered a chair to Junts differentiating between the “programmatic coincidences” that the PP retains with the formation led by Carles Puigdemont of “the actions that may have been committed by four, five or ten people”.
“It is a party whose tradition and legality are not in doubt”, he ended by pointing out to finish packing the offer.
The inclusion of Junts per Catalunya in the same investiture equation in which Vox is included could make Feijóo’s plan go badly. And so the general coordinator of the popular assumes it. “It is complicated to approach Junts because of their positions and political demands”, the Andalusian pointed out, but he also insisted that it is necessary to allow that from the PP “we try because politics is the art of achieving the possible and this can only be achieved through dialogue, and not by putting up walls and trenches”.
The popular ones, at least, have it in their favor with the interpretation that Vox has made in the last few days of its statutes. As Santiago Abascal has reiterated, the far-right will not under any circumstances support a PP government in which one or more nationalist formations can be accommodated. But in the same way, he will not raise any objections to the possible external supports for Feijóo’s investiture once the people explore the ways he deems appropriate.
The popular people are just as willing to start a dialogue with Junts as they are with the PNB, despite accumulating half a dozen express negatives to add to their votes. In Génova they insist on scratching the abstention of the parliamentary group led by Aitor Esteban so that, in a second vote, the 172 supporters of the PP, Vox, UPN and Coalició Canària can be used to evict Pedro Sánchez from the presidency of the Spanish Government.
The socialists, meanwhile, observe the movements from a thoughtful background. The 34 days of margin that the president of the Congress, Francina Armengol, decided to grant yesterday to the Popular Party to negotiate their supports are more than they would have wanted. And as much as their parliamentary spokesman, Patxi López, downplayed this fact yesterday, assuring that “it is the same whether Feijóo has five days or a month”, because “the failure will be the same”, the socialists distrust the “exercise of dilation of the popular” behind which they see “a strategy to see if they get the repeat elections”.
Apart from the movements of the PP, the support of the Left or the PNB is impossible. The Republicans do not want to see Feijóo as president even in the picture and the Councilor of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, took it upon herself yesterday to put all the possible buckets at the door of the negotiation: “My party has never voted for the PP and not he will never do it, so the investiture of Feijóo does not challenge us”.
The republicans only have eyes for the PSOE, despite the fact that in November of last year, in their eagerness to establish themselves as bulwarks of dialogue and to never abandon it, they went so far as to say that they would be willing to sit in the dialogue table to negotiate amnesty and the right to self-determination in case the PP succeeds in reaching Moncloa. Today things have changed and they will not even meet with the popular president.
The PNB also continues to give extensions. But unlike ERC, the Jeltzales would hold a meeting with Feijóo. Of course, “courtesy”. “If the PP calls us, I think that to have a minimum of courtesy you need to go to the meeting”, to get to know each other, said yesterday the spokesman in the Congress of Deputies of the Basque nationalists, Aitor Esteban. “But it will not serve for anything else”, he added. He was even more graphic about the month that awaits them, before the investiture session: “There will be a lot of speculation and a lot of marketing, but there will be no surprises.” In addition, he made it clear again that the PNB will not collaborate in an investiture of the Vox arm.
What remains airtight is Junts. The post-convergents returned to the key of the negotiation with the pacts for the constitution of the Bureau, after years denying any possibility of understanding “with the parties of 155”. In an interview with La Vanguardia during the electoral campaign, Míriam Nogueras, number one of Junts al Congres, stated that if a PP president is put to the vote “obviously we will vote no”. Yesterday they declined to make any comment, and although party sources refuse to sit down with the PP, they do admit that there may be contacts. “If they call us and offer us amnesty and self-determination… A dejudicialization of the process, with the practical effects of an amnesty, can also be addressed by the Popular Party”, they point out.
In any case, the key to the negotiation is in the possession of ex-president Carles Puigdemont and the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull.
