Sánchez rules out Puigdemont's investiture: “He has to accept reality”

“That is completely ruled out,” Pedro Sánchez settled when asked if the PSC is going to facilitate the investiture of Carles Puigdemont with its abstention, as the Junts candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat intends. In the first interview that he carried out after the Catalan elections last Sunday, in La Sexta, the President of the Government was explicit: “Puigdemont has to accept reality, there is no pro-independence parliamentary majority in the Parliament.” And his bet has been evident: “All roads, in the end, lead to the same protagonist, who is the winner of the elections and who is Salvador Illa.”

“We are in a parliamentary democracy,” Sánchez argued. And Puigdemont, he has stressed, has not even managed to win the elections and gain a parliamentary majority for his investiture. “Puigdemont wanted to win the elections and he wanted to add a pro-independence parliamentary majority in the Parliament, and he has not achieved one thing or the other,” he stressed. “Therefore, it will take him more or less time, but in the end the reality is the reality, and that is that they do not give him the numbers to be elected president in the new Parliament of Catalonia,” he pointed out. “The numbers are what they are.”

The 12-M elections in Catalonia have left, in his opinion, several “indisputable” readings. The first is that there is no parliamentary majority of the pro-independence formations, the second is that the option that won at the polls, the PSC of Salvador Illa, clearly opted for “understanding, agreement and coexistence”, the third is that “there is a majority progressive option from a parliamentary point of view of 68 seats”, and the fourth that “the right and the extreme right continue to be a minority.” The conclusion, he pointed out, is that on Sunday “coexistence and overcoming conflicts through politics” triumphed.

Sánchez has also raised concerns about the possibility that, if he does not achieve his investiture, Puigdemont will withdraw support for the Government of the seven Junts deputies in Congress, essential, just like those from ERC, the PNV or EH Bildu, to maintain the legislature. “There is a large parliamentary majority to carry out different initiatives. But, in any case, the plans are different,” he alleged. However, the head of the Executive has warned: “It is advisable not to make a mistake.” In the general elections of July 23, he noted, “Catalan society was quite explicit, resounding in its support for the progressive coalition government.” An Executive who, he has stressed, has promoted “coexistence, normalization and stability in Catalonia.”

The head of the Government has once again criticized the management of Mariano Rajoy’s administration to “avoid and make chronic” the “serious constitutional crisis” that Catalonia suffered in 2017. And he has defended its “risky decisions”, such as pardons and amnesty , despite the fact that they were measures with broad social protest, even among the ranks of the PSOE. “We took a gamble, and it has proven to be worth it,” Sánchez highlighted. “It has had an effect, it has had a result, we were right,” he assured. “Today Spain is more united than in 2017,” he concluded. “Democracy has demonstrated its strength with forgiveness,” he insisted, given the “healing effects” of these initiatives.

Sánchez has also denounced that now Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s PP “just misses the process.” According to him he lamented, “the traditional right has surrendered, it has succumbed to the extreme right.” “Where has it taken Feijóo to copy Vox’s xenophobic speech? Nowhere, Vox is still there,” he assured. And he has warned that the right only accounts for 20% of the votes in Catalonia, now the PP and Vox, and in the previous regional elections together with Ciudadanos. “The Catalans with their vote have said it’s over, we must open a new time,” he assured. And Feijóo, in his opinion, “has dropped the last speech.” So he has called on the PP: “What are you going to do at Illa’s investiture?”

Because what Sánchez has also taken for granted is that “what Catalan society would not accept is an electoral repetition.” The only option, therefore, in his opinion, is an investiture of Salvador Illa as president of the Generalitat.