Next Monday the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will announce whether he continues to lead the central Executive or takes a step back and resigns. Until then, the leader of the PSOE has also canceled all his public events to reflect and make a decision as a result of the action of the right and the extreme right with the complaint to his wife that Sánchez describes as “harassment and demolition” and that a Madrid’s court of first instance has opened proceedings to see if it admits the complaint from the organization Manos Médicas to processing.
As of today, Sánchez cannot call early elections, since less than a year has passed since the last early dissolution of the Cortes Generales took place, which was on May 29 of last year, one day after the municipal elections – and autonomous communities in several communities – in which the socialists came out badly.
Thus, the dissolution of Congress and the early electoral call may occur on May 29 at the earliest, a month after Sánchez announces what he will do on Monday.
In the event that the President of the Government leans towards resignation, the central Executive, as stipulated in Article 101 of the Constitution, would cease and remain in office until there is a new Government. A sitting executive does not have the power to call general elections. “The Government ceases after the holding of general elections, in cases of loss of parliamentary confidence provided for in the Constitution, or due to the resignation or death of its President,” reads article 101.1 of the Magna Carta. “The dismissed Government will continue in office until the new Government takes office,” is stated in 101.2.
If necessary, the King should begin a new round of consultations with the parliamentary groups and designate a new candidate for an investiture debate. In any case, for this process there is no set calendar and if a situation of blockage were to occur, there is the possibility of appointing a technical candidate who is rejected and by not obtaining sufficient support a two-month timer would be activated that would lead to the polls again, once the period has expired.
Be that as it may, the candidate for the presidency of the government does not necessarily have to be a member of Congress, as was already seen with Pedro Sánchez’s motion of censure against Mariano Rajoy in May 2018, when the general secretary of the PSOE did not have a seat, or with the Vox motion of censure last year in which the candidate was Ramón Tamames.
Another option that Sánchez has on the table is to submit to a question of confidence in the Congress of Deputies so that the groups that invested him a few months ago ratify their support. To overcome this procedure, a simple majority is enough, more votes in favor than against, and if it is not passed, the President of the Government must present his resignation to the King and we return to the aforementioned assumption of the resignation of the Chief Executive.
“If Congress denies its confidence in the Government, it will present its resignation to the King, and will then proceed to the appointment of the President of the Government, in accordance with the provisions of Article 99,” reads the Constitution. That is, start a round of consultations with the parties that have representation and designate a new candidate.
In Spain there is a precedent for the resignation of a president of the government. Adolfo Suárez presented his resignation at the end of January 1981 and a few weeks later Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo was proposed as a presidential candidate, during whose investiture, on February 23, the Coup d’état took place in the Lower House of the lieutenant colonel. of the Antonio Tejero Civil Guard. Once the riot was deactivated, Calvo-Sotelo was sworn in as president of the government.
