The election of the Bureau of the Congress of Deputies hangs by a thread. This morning, before the parliamentary session begins, Junts per Catalunya, Esquerra Republicana, Basque Nationalist Party and Canarian Coalition will announce their verdict. Nothing like this had ever happened. Agonizing start Airs for repeating the elections, depending on how the voting ends.
The two main leaders, Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, appeared before their deputies and senators. Sánchez, sure of himself, maybe too much. He feels invincible and this may be a mirage. Feijóo, a little off. He doesn’t have them all with him and he doesn’t feel comfortable in Madrid.
Everything hangs in the balance. Even if Sánchez were to be sworn in a few months from now, the PSOE and Sumar would hardly be able to govern for more than a year, having against them the Bureau of Congress, the absolute majority of the right in the Senate, with parliamentary alliances that are almost impossible to weave ( if they fail today), with most of the media system against it and the high judiciary entrenched in the headquarters of the General Council of the Judiciary, Carrer Marqués de la Cala, number 8, Madrid 28004.
On the contrary, it is very difficult for Núñez Feijóo to win the investiture vote, if he obtains the King’s order. His main problem is the alliance of the Popular Party with Vox, from the base to the heights. From the municipal and autonomous alliances, just sealed and signed, to the plan devised by Manfred Weber, president of the European People’s Party, to configure a broad conservative bloc with segments of the continental extreme right after the decisive European Parliament elections expected for June 2024. This alliance repels the PNB, which has elections in the Basque Parliament in the spring (shortly before the European ones), in tough competition with EH Bildu.
Agonizing start Repeating the elections would become a constant ailment of the Spanish political system, with the consequent demand to carry out a thorough modification of the electoral regime, intact since the Political Reform law of November 1976.
The negotiation for the Congress Bureau has ended up being a tactical exercise with three tracks. On the first track, the PSOE with Junts per Catalunya and ERC. In the second, the PSOE and the Basque-Canary consortium (PNB and Coalició Canària). In the third, the PP locked in a cage with Vox, sending emissaries to Bilbao and Morse messages to Waterloo.
In the first hint, Junts has demanded gestures from the Socialist Party, “verifiable facts”, in the words of Carles Puigdemont yesterday morning on the X network. The first socialist gesture has been to replace Meritxell Batet with Francina Armengol as candidate for the presidency of the congress Batet has suffered first degree burns in a very tough legislature. Armengol now appears as the figurehead of a PSOE that could one day sail to the port of Antwerp to have a meeting in Waterloo.
There have been more gestures. Sánchez promised yesterday in front of his deputies and senators that he will work actively for the official recognition of the Catalan language (plus Basque and Galician) in the European Parliament. It is an old Catalan claim from the time of José Rodríguez Zapatero. Every time this topic comes up, he runs into the Brussels bureaucracy. The words of the socialist general secretary were not banal. The recognition of Catalan in Brussels is one of the demands that Puigdemont has made to Moncloa, according to La Vanguardia. The Junts leader wants Sánchez to activate his network of contacts in European politics to achieve this recognition. As an MEP, Puigdemont wants to go all in on this goal. European elections in June 2024, in which Amer’s favorite son will be a candidate again. The left tries not to lose momentum in this new dialectic. There is anxiety. There is jealousy. In the early hours of last night, Armengol still did not have his support. ERC did not want to leave Puigdemont alone in the suspense narrative. Yolanda Díaz also did not want to be left out of the picture. The leader of Sumar explained that she was actively participating in “high-level” negotiations, together with ex-deputy J aume Asens, always well received in Waterloo.
In track number 2, the Basque-Canary consortium has offered the PSOE the possibility of reaching 172 votes and prevailing on the right (171), if it allowed the PNB into the Table. It is the proposal advanced in this newspaper on Sunday by the president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo Batlle. Bildu does not like this plan. In the PSOE, neither, until yesterday afternoon. The socialists would not want to lose control of the Bureau and cede one of its positions to the PNB, which would become the faithful of the balance. In the event of a dispute – request for commissions of investigation – the PNB would decide. A senior leader of the Euzkadi Buru Batzar was in Madrid yesterday afternoon to try to get the negotiation on track.
If there is no deal on track number one and no pact on track number two, he can win track number three, with Milei the lion in the cage.
