Citizens bet strongly against the most powerful baron of the PP, and lost. He failed to bend his arm. Achieving it was an almost impossible feat: Cs lacks representation in the Galician Parliament, in the last regional elections it obtained 3.38% of the votes, while Feijóo has 41 deputies - the absolute majority is 38 - and took the basket of PP 47.5% of the ballots. The popular wielded from the first day of the negotiations that with those numbers it could not be said, as Citizens have argued, that what both parties call "constitutionalism" is "in danger" in Galicia. Nor did the threat of the Arrimadas party to present themselves to those elections posed any problem for the popular Galicians, convinced that Cs does not help them add up. Finally, Arrimadas has had to yield. There will be no coalition in Galicia and there will be in the Basque Country.
MORE INFORMATION
- Feijóo transmits to Arrimadas that it will not accept the coalition in Galicia
- Casado and Arrimadas advance in their alliance in the Basque Country, but not in Galicia
- Citizens raises criticism against the PP for its refusal to negotiate a coalition in Galicia
The Parliamentary spokeswoman for Citizens announced, after meeting Tuesday with the president of the PP, Pablo Casado, that he would personally call Feijóo in a final attempt to convince him of the coalition. The conversation on Wednesday between the two was long: Arrimadas found that the popular leader was not going to give his arm a twist, but they both agreed to continue talking to explore "other forms of electoral collaboration." According to sources from the Galician PP, Feijóo asked the spokeswoman of Cs to designate “authorized interlocutors” in Galicia to land the negotiations in that community. Beatriz Pino, candidate for the Galician primary of Cs, will be in contact with the PP.
Cs insisted after the conversation between the two that "Galicia is one of the three territories of Spain most threatened by nationalism" and that the Government could be endangered by "a handful of votes" (alluding to theirs). Although Feijóo does not have that fear, he agrees to explore an alliance with Cs thinking of a national strategy: “I am an advocate that Cs and the PP end up understanding and we propose a joint proposal for Spain,” he said Wednesday.
What interests Pablo Casado most of that alliance in Euskadi is laying the foundations for a nationwide coalition, Spain adds, for the next generals.
The Galician president has offered to include independents in his lists. The idea, rejected flat all these days spent by Citizens, could break through. According to Cs sources, the party is now willing to study integrating members of its party into the PP lists whenever their autonomy is ensured - one of the measures to preserve it would be that their deputies could count on vote independence. However, at the meeting on Tuesday between Casado and Arrimadas, the popular did not guarantee this possibility. Feijóo and the spokeswoman for Cs agreed that they will continue negotiating. The deadline for coalitions closes this Thursday, but they have until March to present the electoral list.
The coalition has been easier in the Basque Country, where Citizens do not currently have representation either. The secretary general of the PP, Teodoro García Egea, and the secretary general of the parliamentary group of Cs, José María Espejo, met this Wednesday late in the afternoon to close the fringes of the agreement. Although the deadline to register the coalition in Euskadi ends this Friday, Cs needed to have a pact before because this Thursday meets the general council of the party that must approve that it can appear in an electoral coalition. That is why both parties accelerated the talks.
The negotiator of Cs sent in the morning a document to number two of the PP with the bases of the agreement. In that proposal, Cs is in second place on the list led by Alonso and at least three other starting positions, one per province. The framework agreement proposed by Cs also says that both formations will have to reach a programmatic pact. There some pitfalls could arise because Cs questions the Basque economic concert, although he has modulated his position and now limits himself to asking for a “transparent” quota calculation, instead of its elimination. In Navarra, Cs already accepted the Navarrese concert.
The Basque coalition will be the second pre-election alliance signed by PP and Cs, after Navarra. Both parties also share four regional governments and the City Council of the capital. Inés Arrimadas, with ten seats in Congress, aspired to force the PP to negotiate the pact to three - Basque Country, Galicia and Catalonia - asserting its strength in Catalonia (where it has 36 deputies for the four of the PP) but its strategy lost bellows because Quim Torra has not yet called the Catalan elections.
Pending fringes
Sources of the PP and Citizens said Wednesday that they have left pending some fringes of the agreement, such as the name of the electoral coalition and the joint program. The popular propose a formula similar to "Spain Sum" (like "Basque Country Suma or Euskadi Suma"), while Cs bets on "Best United". The programmatic agreement will also have to be closed in the next few days.
Both parties aspire to achieve around 12 seats with the coalition. The popular have nine deputies in the Basque Parliament and Cs has none, but negotiating sources say that according to their calculations the sum could raise their representation to 12 seats. The coalition will also include UPyD and ex-referees of that party, such as the philosopher Fernando Savater, who will support her but will not go into starting positions.