Pedro Sánchez is now for all intents and purposes Spanish prime minister, having got through the vote in the Congress by just two votes (167 yeses and 165 noes), and the corresponding decree of nomination has been signed by the head of state, a preliminary step for him to take the oath of office at 11 this Wednesday morning. Over, therefore, is the time for words, and the time for actions is here. The time for abiding by agreements. The time for answers. The first of his commitments, the dialogue table with the Catalan government, which everyone took for certain would be set up within two weeks, has today no meeting date since the first decision by the prime minister as soon as he was invested was to leak from the Moncloa palace that the nominations of his new ministers would be put back a week. And the agreement literally says that "the dialogue table will start its work within fifteen days of the formation of the government of Spain."
It's striking, however, that Pedro Sánchez should have looked for days as bizarre for the investiture debate as the 4th and 5th of January for the first round and the 7th for the second and now he's waiting a week to announce his government. Was such haste necessary or was it, once again, one of his whims? It could be anecdotal, but given the prime minister's ease with breaking his promises, it wouldn't be a bad strategy for the political groups which have supported him to not forgive him even one thing from the first day. Experience shows that the prime minister only takes care of things when he finds himself needing support and, on the other hand, has great facility with washing his hands of things when it's others who've got the problems.
From this Tuesday's parliamentary session, special mention deserves to be made of Montse Bassa, ERC delegate and sister of minister Dolors Bassa, sentenced to 12 years in prison for sedition and misuse of public funds by the Supreme Court. The bluntness of Montse Bassa's words from the podium indicating that she couldn't care less about the governability of Spain, labelling PSOE "executioners" and asking them if they enjoyed her pain caused a widespread response from the right's benches and accusations she was a coup supporter. A demonstration of how the legislature will go, which we've had juicy previews of over these days. Everything is going to help the right to remove legitimacy from the government whilst they try to dismember the occupant of the Moncloa. It should be a reason for Sánchez to not make the mistakes there were after the confidence motion he won. But anyone who knows him can only look at the prime minister with skepticism and distrust. Because the value of his words has, so far, been very little.