The acting Spanish prime minister and candidate for reelection will next week start, he has announced himself, talks with the leaders of the PP, Pablo Casado, Ciudadanos, Albert Rivera, and Unidas Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, to find out what support he enjoys for a possible reinvestiture. So far, so normal. It's the logical thing to do following his election win on Sunday: seek the necessary support for a large enough majority to be invested prime minister whilst fleeing from the pressures from UP, which is burning with desire to join his executive under whatever plan possible.
But the numbers, despite being very favourable to Pedro Sánchez, are stubborn and after meeting with these three groups he'll have confirmed that he's got 165 deputies ready to enable his investiture and 123 against (to which have to be added the 24 from far-right Vox, bringing the total to 147). As such, he's got work to do to get the 176 he needs to be elected in the first round of voting or, if that fails, to persuade one of the other parties to abstain. Arithmetically speaking, the easiest thing would be for this party to be Catalan pro-independence party ERC, since its 15 seats in the Congress have an important role to play in any plan PSOE wants to go for.
For that reason, they can laugh all they want, as we've heard, at the proposal from the Catalan Parliament's speaker, Roger Torrent, inviting Sánchez to go and speak with Oriol Junqueras in Soto del Real prison, where he is being held, but as he's the winner of the election in Catalonia and holding 15 votes in the investiture, some member of PSOE should take a step forwards. It won't happen, obviously, since the repetitive dialogue they've been boasting about is far from steps like this. The Madrid media which always sees coup plotters at every corner, except those within its borders, won't allow him to.
But what's certain is that without any of the votes from the different pro-independence parties which have 28 seats between those from Catalonia, the Basque Country and Navarre, Sánchez won't get his 176. In other words, sooner or later, he'll have to go knock on one of the cell doors or at the offices of his elected deputies.