We will wait and see if she ends up becoming a member of the next government or not, but the current Spanish political situation has precipitated its first victim: the speaker's position in the Congress of Deputies will not remain in the hands of the Catalan Socialist (PSC) parliamentarian Meritxell Batet. The Catalan politician was a red line for Together for Catalonia (Junts) - also for the Republican Left (ERC) and, in a way, for Podemos - after her attitude in the previous legislature in which she took a strong line in a controversial meeting of the Bureau of Congress and removed the seats of Oriol Junqueras, of ERC, and of Jordi Sànchez, Jordi Turull and Josep Rull, of Junts, based only on reports drawn up by the chamber's lawyers.
Batet's decision provoked a debate that greatly offended the speaker, since she was reprimanded, even by judges from autonomous community courts, for having overstepped boundaries and that the speakership of Congress appeared subjugated to the interests of the Supreme Court and of judge Manuel Marchena. Miguel Pasquau, for example, from the Andalusian High Court, claimed that it was not a judicial matter, but was about Parliament, and that it was absurd to let someone be elected - as they had been - who could not serve as deputy even for a second. Waiting for the pronouncement of the Constitutional Court would have been, at least, a small gesture, since she was not prepared to defend four elected MPs, which should have been her default position.
Now, the new majorities have led to the first consequences stemming from past times. Surely, from his holidays in Morocco, it was general Sánchez who had to advise her to step away and that, in any case, he would reposition her if he could. Which remains to be seen, taking into account the struggle that is already beginning, with little or no attempt to keep it screened off, for the speaker's post, which must be chosen on the 17th. It is the third highest position of authority in the Spanish state and it is not yet clear in whose hands it will end up, but the PSOE and its deputies - second most numerous in the chamber after the PP, which is arithmetically in the lead - seem to have no tickets in this raffle.
Days ago, I already noted that one would have to be completely ignorant of the road map of president Puigdemont and his way of acting in politics to assume, as the Socialists have, that the real battle will be after the election of the speaker of Congress and that, obviously, this position would be theirs. There is, however, a radically different way of seeing things, and I have already begun to feel it: that the PSOE will begin to understand what the game is about if it suffers a setback in such an important election.
Just how seriously it might trip up is still to be known, but if Junts has decided to assert itself and bring Pedro Sánchez out of his lethargy, there are those who think that, perhaps, the sooner the better. This is why Sumar is getting nervous, because they have indeed moved, and are bewildered by the inaction of the acting PM. At this rate, someone might arrive very late to the battle of August 17th.