The Popular Party came out on Tuesday against a possible agreement between the PSOE and Junts for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. He did so only 24 hours after his candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, offered the PSOE, "a state party", as he defined it, an investiture agreement to prevent extremism from deciding the future Government of Spain. Despite the outstretched hand of Feijóo – after months defending the need to "repeal sanchismo" – the PP came out on Tuesday in different forums to disqualify the Socialists for their intentions of pact with Junts to guarantee four more years of Government.
The secretary general of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, defended that "so that there can be another option" other than the investiture of the leader of the PP, "the capital of Spain would cease to be in Madrid to move to Waterloo directed by a fugitive from justice", in relation to the former Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, and his city of residence in Brussels. The Popular Party insisted on Tuesday that the future of Spain can only go through the investiture of Feijóo or a blockade that leads to the repetition of elections at the end of the year.
The parliamentary spokesperson of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, in statements on Wednesday in Congress.MARISCAL AGENCIA EFE (EFE)
Jaime de Olano, spokesman for the PP in the Permanent Deputation that met on Tuesday in the Congress of Deputies, dedicated part of his speech on the decree law of anti-crisis measures to air the danger of a pact between the acting Government and Junts for the investiture of Sánchez. Olano claimed the right of the PP to form a government after being the most voted force in the last elections, but admitted the possibility that it is Pedro Sánchez who can add the necessary votes for the investiture. That fact led him to criticize a possible agreement with up to 18 different political formations – here he included the 15 left-wing parties gathered around Sumar – among which were several separatist forces that pursue the independence of Catalonia and Euskadi.
More information
Results, pacts and reactions of the General Elections of 23J
The strategy of the PP to stir up the fear of a possible pact of the Socialists with the independence forces for the investiture of Sánchez was joined by the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who came to suggest, without any evidence to support it, that there is already a pact between the PSOE and the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont: "It is my duty to warn that Pedro Sánchez is going to take advantage of these days of August, with Spain on vacation, to ensure power at all costs and close his pacts behind the backs of the Spaniards. Again, he is lying to the nation, since he already has a pact with Puigdemont to sell our nation in two weeks." That pact, according to Ayuso, involves changing the territorial structure of Spain.
The PP did not clarify on Tuesday if these attacks on the hypothetical pact of Junts with the PSOE for the investiture of Sánchez leave on paper the offer of agreement that he made last Tuesday to the party of Pedro Sánchez. Or if it is simply a matter of expressing skepticism about the possibility that this negotiation, which still has no date, could bear some fruit. The secretary general of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, summoned in any case the acting president of the Government to answer next week to the call of Feijóo to sit down to negotiate that possible agreement.
The ministers María Jesús Montero and Félix Bolaños, this Wednesday in the Permanent Deputation of the Congress. MARISCAL AGENCIA EFE (EFE)
For its part, the PSOE rejects any possibility of a pact with the PP on the investiture and the future Government of Spain. The acting Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, and the acting minister and deputy secretary general of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, argued that the PP has not won "because in reality it has failed in a parliamentary system where the one that gets the most support governs". And they found that the popular have no one with whom to agree and are in a "terrible loneliness" after years of "disrespecting and insulting" other groups.
More information
Podemos warns that it will exercise "political autonomy" in Sumar the next legislature
The difficulty of the current government in office to revalidate power is to convince the seven Junts deputies in Congress to abstain or vote in favor of Sánchez in the investiture session – if the external vote, which will be counted in the coming days, does not change Sunday's results. Junts is led by Carles Puigdemont, a fugitive from justice whom magistrate Pablo Llarena intends to bring to Spain so that he can be tried for the crimes of disobedience and aggravated embezzlement.
Puigdemont could no longer be tried in Spain for the crime of sedition, for which some of his colleagues in the Catalan Government were sentenced in 2019 to high prison sentences: the Executive of Pedro Sánchez, pressured by ERC, reformed in 2021 the Criminal Code to eliminate the crime of sedition and replace it with that of public disorder, with less jail time.
However, the magistrates of the Supreme Court who tried the Catalan independence leaders have considered that this new crime does not fit into the events that occurred in Catalonia on October 1, 2017. For that reason, the legal reform allows that if Puigdemont decides to return to Spain and surrenders to justice, he can be sentenced for the same facts to fewer years in prison than his former colleagues in the Catalan Executive.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Read more
I'm already a subscriber