The negotiations between PSOE and Unidas Podemos are not an obstacle for Pedro Sánchez. During the investiture debate, this Monday afternoon in the Spanish Congress, the Socialist candidate has again insisted on the same thing he has done for the last three months: PP and Ciudadanos have to abstain in the investiture vote to make the conformation of the government "does not depend on the independence parties".
He has done it, briefly, during his inaugural speech before the Congress whilst asking for their vote of confidence, and he has done it with even more insistence in his reply to Pablo Casado -PP's leader. "You need to choose if you want stability or elections, you must go out on a limb" -Sánchez told Casado. "If you do not want me to depend on the Catalan pro-independence forces, and you want to be the leader of the opposition, I have to give you bad news: you have to abstain" -he added. The same message has been addressed to Albert Rivera.
"Your voters and the country is asking you to abstain so as not to depend on forces that go against the Constitution and the territorial integrity," PSOE's leader insisted. And he has done it even recalling that a hypothetical election would come after the 1st October referendum trial verdict and after the deadline for Brexit, with an interim government." A party like yours should do a service to Spain," he said. However, what Sánchez has found is Pablo Casado's closed door.
On the other hand, the investiture candidate has criticised the people who use Catalonia to hide their party's internal problems, and also their responsibility in the magnitude of the Catalan conflict. "Do you not have anything to do with what has happened in Catalonia in the last seven years?" He asked. In this sense, Sánchez recalled the key "initial problem" of the Home Law 'Estatut' voted in referendum by the Catalan people (2006) [the 'Estatut' is the Catalan Constitution within the Spanish Constitution, whose content was changed four years later by the Spanish Constitutional Court (Sentence 31/2010)] and appealed by the PP. He also stressed that the PSOE closed ranks with the PP with the application of article 155 "in the biggest crisis" that Spain has experienced. Now he asks for "reciprocity" to face a problem that is "logically political".
In his investiture speech, where he has tiptoed over the Catalan question, Sanchez argued that the only way to solve this territorial crisis is to "respond by proposing a regeneration project" that is capable of attracting disenchanted Catalans.