The contest for the selection of the Bureau and the speaker in Spain's Congress of Deputies continues, with, at the time of writing, just over 24 hours before the constitution of Las Cortes and everything still as open as it has been in recent weeks: a Spanish Socialist (PSOE) party entrenched in its attitude of not making concessions, beyond that of offering formal parliamentary groups for Together for Catalonia (Junts) and the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), which, although it would mean a direct economic income of 1.3 million euros for those parties - is a favour of little political import given all that is at stake.
The PSOE, oblivious to all this, have nominated their candidate for speaker, Francina Armengol, a choice that is meant to be a complicit wink, since during her time as Socialist president of the Balearic Islands, she fought hard in in favour of the Catalan language and in recent years even made some statements that were well received by pro-independence groups. Pedro Sánchez knows about gestures, but what is currently on the table is not one name or another, but what the Junts votes are worth and whether the PSOE or the People's Party (PP) are willing to pay a price. From this point of view, the proposal of Armengol as speaker is tangential.
If things continue to be stuck at this point, it is most likely that Junts will, in the end, vote for its own candidate, at least in the first round, and thus no one would have the absolute majority required by article 37.1 of the parliamentary regulations. The second round, when only more votes for than votes against are required, is a contest between the two candidates with most votes in the first ballot, and if intermediate candidacies, such as that of the Basque Nationalists (PNV), do not succeed, it would be a run-off between the representatives of the PSOE and the PP. Here, Junts could either cast a favourable vote for one of the two candidates or a null vote. In the hypothesis that Puigdemont's deputies do not cast valid votes for the speaker, the Canarian Coalition seat would break the existing tie at 171, as long as Sánchez was able to retain all his other support, including the seven Republican Left deputies.
The erratic position of the Socialists, beyond creating all sorts of nervousness among their current government partners, those of Sumar, is having collateral effects within their left-wing alliance. ERC has corrected the course it was on last week and now insists that nothing has been agreed and the MP Gerardo Pisarello, who in the last legislature was a member of the Bureau for Unidas Podemos, has openly defended the approval of an amnesty for Catalan independence process prosecutions, to obtain a commitment from Puigdemont's deputies for the formation of a left-bloc-led Bureau.
As we have experienced in the Spanish elections of 2015 and 2019 - both of which had to be repeated due to lack of agreement - it is necessary to imagine the possibility that both the PSOE and the PP are openly committed to the holding of a fresh election. Sánchez, with the theory that he will have electoral success if he doesn't make concessions to pro-independence spheres and Feijóo counting on the internal crisis within Vox to give him a better result than the 23rd July thanks to the allocation of seats under Spain's D'Hondt method. In fact, the dates of December 17th - if things go quickly, with a failed investiture - and January 14th - if the parliamentary pace is slower - are already being considered.
In Puigdemont's circles there is an ever greater sense that Sánchez wants a new election as a second round and that is why no significant political movements are taking place. If this is the decision of the acting prime minister, Junts will not lower the demands in its road map to avoid a new date with the polls. The general opinion is that the course is decided and there will be no votes without concessions on a scale that would justify them, and here, an amnesty and the recognition of the Catalan right to self-determination continue to be the keystones.