2023-07-25 02:05:00
Pedro Sánchez seeks re-election with the support of regional parties. Photo: La Moncloa Press
The Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) is negotiating at full steam a series of agreements with Basque and Catalan independence forces to get the votes that will allow it to form a new government and remain in La Moncloa, although the key to this possibility is in the hands of Junts per Catalunya (JxC), which will try to put another referendum on the table on the status of that autonomous community, said analysts consulted by Télam.
The PSOE of outgoing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his leftist allies in the Sumar coalition held a much better general election on Sunday than the polls had predicted, frustrating the most likely scenario that the right-wing Popular Party (PP) managed to return to power allied with the far-right force Vox.
“The main reading of these elections is that there was a clear failure of the rightwhich had generated expectations of winning, because the left resisted much better than expected, even than what their own voters believed”, said Sergio Sevilla, political scientist at the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics (Celag).
For the analyst, a former deputy for the leftist party Podemos, “The threat of a fascist government has served to mobilize a part of the electorate that, without going any further, in 2019 did not go to vote”, and “when turnout at the polls is greater than 70%, the left wins”he added.
In this scheme, Seville highlighted the “political intelligence” that Sánchez demonstrated, when the day after the victory of the PP and Vox in the municipal and regional elections on May 28, he dissolved Parliament and advanced to this July 23 the elections scheduled for December.
“Pedro Sánchez took into account the conformation of the governments in the autonomous communities, and he did so while being clear that the right and the extreme right were going to have to understand each other in places like Valencia and others, and campaign in the midst of those negotiations.. Sánchez’s political intelligence was there, in knowing how to choose the moment, “he expanded.
On the options that the PSOE has to form a government in alliance with Sumar and regional forces, Seville stressed that socialism knows that The key is in JxC, whose sole motto is to make Catalonia independent of Spain and who governed the region when it unilaterally declared its independence after an illegal self-determination referendum in 2017.
The fugitive Puigdemont de Junts wants to assert his 7 seats to negotiate with the PSOE. Photo: Xinhua
“The other pro-independence forces that exist in Euskadi (Basque Country) and in other regions are a government or aspire to be, like Bildu. So negotiations between a central and a regional power are relatively easy, because it has to do with economic items, management support and things like that,” Sevilla said.
“Instead, Junts’ aspirations directly collide with what a national party like the PSOE proposes,” he pointed.
The scenario of this situation, said Sevilla, is that At this time, the block on the left would have 172 seats and the one on the right would have 171, but that Sánchez could retain power if he adds to his support the abstention of JxC in the investiture vote of the President of the Government, which should happen after the new Congress is installed, on August 17.
“If the seven Junts deputies abstain, the problem for the left is resolved, but not if they vote against it,” he said.
So, what is the bargaining chip for Junts?
For Seville, The issue could be an agreed referendum “on a new framework for coexistence, which specifies specific elements of Catalan autonomy, such as the one that Euskadi has” and that “cannot be binding because it implies a reform of a norm that is the responsibility of all of Spain”.
Joaquín Manso, director of the newspaper El Mundosaid for his part that the post-electoral scenario is “of instability and uncertainty”.
“The PP has obtained an insufficient victory to have the majority that Alberto Núñez Feijóo was looking for to govern alone, or in the company of Vox. In front, Pedro Sánchez came out reinforced despite starting second. His results exceed expectations and he does not receive any wear after four years ruling hand in hand with Podemos and the independentistas,” he analyzed.
“The political initiative that is summarized in two alternatives now remains in the hands of Pedro Sánchez. Or govern hand in hand with Esquerra, Bildu, the PNV, Sumar and now also JxC. Or we will go to a scenario of blockade and electoral repetition” if neither the leader of the PSOE nor that of the PP manage to be invested as president of the Government.
“The Popular Party has not been able to repeat the success of a few weeks ago in the municipal and regional elections, because the Prime Minister’s strategy of calling elections immediately afterwards, to highlight the pacts with Vox, has been revealed as successful”said in coincidence with Seville.
Manso highlighted that the elections showed that Vox generates a rejection in the center of the electorate that is greater than what Sánchez can generate with the pacts with the independentistas, and that scared away many voters.
The Catalan left of ERC is closer to pacts with the PSOE
For the Spanish political scientist Alejandro Solís, the PSOE has been left in a stronger position to negotiate with the Catalan independence parties, including JxC, since they lost many seats in Sunday’s elections and socialism, on the other hand, swept Catalonia.
“Junts will have to question its strategy of not negotiating with the ‘Spanish’ partiesas they call them,” he said.
Solís said that the Catalan parties have already clearly said that they prefer a left-wing government at the head of the Spanish state than one of the right and ultra-right, but also that they will set a higher price for the investiture, so negotiations will be more difficult.
“The card that both the PSOE and Sumar are going to play for the negotiation is the threat of an electoral repetition. It is a ‘either take it or leave it’. Either you take it, and the coalition government is revalidated and you support the investiture (of Sánchez), or you leave it and there is an electoral repetition within six months. Junts can lose even more and there can be a right-wing government” PP-Vox said.
For Solís, it is clear that JxC will try to reach an agreement for a referendum on independence for Catalonia, but The PSOE has already been “clearly clear” that it will not accept any pact that violates the Constitution.
The political scientist said that there is a great consensus in Spain that King Felipe VI should not get too involved in politics, beyond the fact that the Constitution establishes that, as head of state, he is in charge of proposing a candidate for president of the Government to be ratified in the investiture vote in Congress.
“Unless in the round of contacts Pedro Sánchez tells the king that he does not have enough support, it is unlikely that the king will propose Feijóo. I don’t think he is going to get involved in politics, far from it”, said.
Solís said he did not believe that Vox had an impact on the “victory with a taste of defeat” of the PP.
“I think that a fundamental question is that the polls were wrong. There were not so many PSOE voters going to the PP. The PP grew because it concentrated the right-wing electorate. “His victory with a taste of defeat is due to himself, to a very bad management of expectations. You can’t go to an election campaign assuming it’s going to be a walk,” he added.
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