2023-08-17 05:35:33
As the new legislature opens, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will find out a little more about his future at the head of Spain. The new deputies elected in July indeed give this Thursday the kick-off of a parliamentary session which promises to be tough and undecided.
The first task of the 350 members of the Congress of Deputies, who will meet at 10 a.m., will be to elect the new president or the new president of the assembly. The vote is eagerly awaited, not because it is the third figure in the state, but because its result will give a clear indication of the possibility of the outgoing Prime Minister being reappointed during a nomination vote which could take place at the end of August or the beginning of September.
A very indecisive first battle
This Thursday’s vote is therefore the first round of a battle whose outcome is, at this stage, unpredictable, because it depends on what the Catalan independence party Junts per Catalunya (JxCat, Together for Catalonia) will decide. Or more precisely its leader Carles Puigdemont, exiled in Belgium and wanted by Spanish justice since 2017 and the failure of an attempt at secession from Catalonia.
This paradox stems from the stunning results of the legislative elections of July 23, which saw a victory much narrower than expected for the People’s Party (PP, right) of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the two blocs, that of the outgoing government on the left and that of the right and the extreme right, seeming to be able to count on 171 votes each.
This unexpected situation has given the central role to JxCat, which has the power to decide whether Pedro Sánchez will continue to lead Spain or, if not, whether the country will have to hold new elections in the coming months. Negotiations continued on Wednesday, in the greatest secrecy, to convince these seven separatist deputies to vote for the socialist candidate for the presidency of the assembly.
Puigdemont hardens the tone
That an independence party, which considers Spain as a foreign state and “oppressor”, is brought to decide its fate is not to displease Carles Puigdemont, who wants to see if the situation can allow him to advance his cause. But his two fundamental demands – a referendum on self-determination and an amnesty for all those prosecuted after the failure of the secession attempt – cannot be satisfied as such by Pedro Sánchez, for both legal and political reasons.
On Wednesday, Carles Puigdemont hardened his tone by recalling on the X network that he had “no confidence in the Spanish political parties”, affirming that there could be no agreement “on the basis of promises made by people who never hold them”. “Therefore, verifiable facts are necessary before committing to any vote,” he said. For Pedro Sánchez, the bar is therefore still very high.
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