It's almost twelve o'clock on Thursday night and a decision has to be made.
Félix Bolaños and Teodoro García Egea have been seeing each other twice a day for a week and talking non-stop on the phone.
The first is Pedro Sánchez's man for everything.
The second, the right hand of Pablo Casado.
They have been together for hours.
Everything is clear.
The PP wants to force the PSOE to choose: they or United We Can.
The popular ones have vetoed the two candidates of Pablo Iglesias for the Judicial Power: judges José Ricardo de Prada and Victoria Rosell.
United We Can and the PSOE make one last concession: Rosell, former deputy of the purple ones, falls off the list.
Another name proposed by the purple appears in the final version.
But De Prada is still there.
He is a judge without a political career, he was already accepted by the PP in 2018, in the previous frustrated negotiation, he has no special drawbacks even if he has to be put on the list of jurists and not on that of judges.
For Iglesias it is a red line.
He cannot accept two vetoes from the PP, he considers it a humiliation.
Almost everything else is agreed or salvageable.
Even the presidency, for which there are several negotiable options.
Although in Unidos Podemos they believe that the real problem has been there, in the presidency, and not so much in the vetoes of its members, which they see more as an excuse.
At that time of night, Prada is an insurmountable obstacle.
The PP says that it will not accept this judge under any circumstances, who was key in the sentence that has done the most damage to the popular in its history: the one that removed them from the Government, overthrew Mariano Rajoy and has the great party of the right on the ropes since then, competing with a split of his like Vox that in 2018, when the motion of censure arrived, did not reach 50,000 votes.
Bolaños makes a final round of consultations to see if Unidos Podemos agrees to put another name in place of De Prada.
The PSOE would assume it, but it is the purple ones who have to say it.
The PP maintains that De Prada came to be off the lists, and returned at the end, but from the Government they assure that there was never a role in which the judge of Gürtel was not.
It does seem clear that the Socialists were willing to lift it, but Unidos Podemos ruled it out.
Bolaños 'interlocutor in this matter, Enrique Santiago, general secretary of the PCE, Iglesias' henchman and lawyer hardened in a thousand battles, including the negotiation of the complex peace in Colombia, makes it clear: it is impossible to renounce De Prada.
In UP they are so fed up with the PP that they begin to suggest that they can also veto names of the popular ones like Judge Alejandro Abascal, who is investigating the Dina case.
But if the PP accepts De Prada, everything can be fixed.
That is the key point.
The negotiation reaches a point of no return.
Egea makes a final consultation with Casado and Bolaños with Sánchez.
It is done.
There's nothing to do.
Breaks.
It will be officially communicated, at 00.21, just 20 minutes later.
The president has just made a major political decision.
The coalition lives difficult hours, there is tension between the partners, but what the PP is proposing at that time of the night, and it has done it from the beginning, is that it choose between them and the group of churches.
PSOE and PP add 209 seats, they could carry out the renewal alone.
But leaving Unidos Podemos out of such an important body would be almost like marking the end of the coalition.
And Sánchez clearly prioritizes the stability of the Government before a pact with the PP that implies a humiliation of its partners and accept a veto that it considers undemocratic because it comes from a party that has five million votes compared to the three of United We Can.
Only a few hours before, PSOE and PP have agreed to a council of RTVE without vetoes, in which the popular have had to vote for the director of Mundo Obrero, José Manuel Martin Medem, and those of Iglesias for Carmen Sastre, who denounces daily that TVE did not sufficiently cover the judicial processes of United We Can.
Sánchez defended De Prada without citing him: "He has an accredited curriculum."
The PP destroyed him: "his appointment would be illegal."
Everything seems broken.
But the president has decided to wait.
It will not change the law to renew the Judicial Power without the PP.
The cards are still on the table.
But it is already known that Sánchez will not break with UP to agree with the popular ones.