The request of Together for Catalonia (Junts) and the Republican Left (ERC) for the new Spanish government to approve an amnesty law to end judicial actions against the Catalan independence movement will require a lot of dexterity and many hours of negotiation on the part of the Socialists (PSOE). For this reason, according to sources at Socialist HQ, the party is approaching the process with "caution, discretion and dialogue" in order to start negotiations with the pro-independence Catalans, and with the certainty that the road will be bumpy considering that the amnesty is interpreted by Junts and ERC as a "red line" condition for voting in favour of Pedro Sánchez's investiture. The goal of the Socialists, as they have stated in recent days, is to repeat the 178 votes that allowed Francina Armengol to be anointed as speaker of Congress. Negotiations are going along these lines.
However, the unusual situation of having two candidates running for the investiture leaves the king, Felipe VI, in a dilemma that he will have to resolve in the next few hours, once he has met with all the political parties that want to take part in the initial round of contacts, which began this Monday. However, the dilemma will not become a race between the PSOE and the opposition People's Party (PP). At least this is the conviction of the Socialists, who admit that they are in no rush and will give way to the PP if they want to try and send Feijóo to Congress as quickly as possible.
"If he wants to go to a fake investiture, it's up to him", they say in Pedro Sánchez's circles, where the promise is "not to try and elbow out Feijóo". "We are not in competition with the PP to see who goes to the investiture first". Thus, the PSOE leaves the path free for the king to designate Feijóo as candidate and will then observe how the PP persists in demanding the confidence of Congress to form a government despite not having the necessary votes, and convinced that the Galician politician will fail. In this regard, the deputy secretary of the PP and one of Feijóo's most trusted men, Esteban González Pons, has stated that they will knock on the door of the Basque Nationalists (PNV) if the king allows them to present their candidate for investiture. In an interview with radio network Cadena COPE, González Pons has once again sought the complicity of the Basques, whom he warned that rejecting an agreement with the PP would make them "irrelevant".
Despite the attempt of the PP to seduce them, the Basque Nationalists have once again been clear. In an interview with Cadena SER, their spokesperson Aitor Esteban, who said that the round of contacts is "premature", blocked the way again for the PP: "There are lines that we will not cross and [if they are] with the ultra-right, the fascists, that they mustn't count on us. This means that there is no way for the investiture of Mr Feijóo with us”.
Coalición Canária allows itself to be flirted with
The 178 votes for the new speaker Armengol were a boost for the PSOE in its quest to win Junts' support in the main event, the investiture. However, if the PSOE's negotiations with Carles Puigdemont's party fail, the investiture may depend on the single MP of the Coalición Canária, Cristina Valido, to break the tie between left and right. After meeting with the monarch, Valido affirmed this Monday that, at present, her vote would be for Feijóo, in line with the support they gave to Cuca Gamarra to head the Congressional Bureau, and assuming that the PP is committed to "the Canarian agenda" and will not form a coalition with Vox.
Aware of the key role she could play, Valido has opened herself up to changing horses if Pedro Sánchez goes to the investiture. Apart from the commitment to the Canarian agenda, the island deputy has made her possible support for the Socialists conditional on the unblocking of the budget items that allowed CC to vote in favour of the Spanish annual budget for 2023. "It would be a first gesture to generating a climate of trust", asserted Valido.
UPN will align with Feijóo's investiture
In the bloc on the right, the People's Party is guaranteed the sole vote of the conservative Unión del Pueblo Navarro. This is what the president of UPN, Javier Esparza, conveyed to king Felipe VI in the first interview of the round of contacts. Even so, the Navarran party, who already allied themselves with the PP in the votes for the Congressional Bureau, are aware of the low probability that the Galician will be elected in the event that the monarch chooses him as a candidate for the investiture and, in this scenario, they would prefer to repeat the general election in place of having a PSOE government with the support of Catalan and Basque independentists.
"The PSOE is looking to govern with those who want to break up Spain, those who do not believe in this country and want to leave it. We should be concerned that [Basque pro-independence party] Bildu and a fugitive from justice [sic] can decide who the prime minister will be or whether we go to a new election", said Esparza, who is committed to going to the polls again in this scenario. "Hopefully we are entering a new electoral cycle. The best scenario for Spain would be a scenario in which it does not depend on Junts and Bildu". In addition, he asked Sánchez not to enter into an amnesty agreement with Junts and ERC: "You can't give in to the pro-independence parties on issues that could be unconstitutional".