Madrid. The left-wing coalition Sumar, in which Podemos joined, accused the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) of “lack of ambition” to sit down and negotiate as soon as possible with the Basque, Catalan and Galician nationalist formations the investiture as president of the government of Pedro Sánchez, who has been on vacation for a week and a half and has still not resumed his public agenda. While his main adversary on the right, the candidate of the Popular Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is maneuvering various gangs to at least try to get King Felipe VI, in his capacity as head of state, to order him to run for investiture in the Congress of Deputies, thus forcing the first vote and launching the new legislature.
While the PP is willing to go to the investiture session with the 172 votes in favor that it has guaranteed today -the 137 of the PP, plus the 33 of Vox and the seat of the Unión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN) and Coalition Canary Islands (CC)-; In the PSOE there are still no public movements to bring positions closer to the Catalan and Basque independence movement, which are the ones that have the necessary votes to carry out the formation of the new government.
Hence, Sumar’s spokesman, Ernest Urtasun, pointed out to the socialist leadership “lack of ambition” in the face of the first proposals they have received to unblock the investiture and thus guarantee the support of nationalism. The proposals that we are forwarded to are insufficient, we want ambitious commitments and so far the PSOE has not been proposing concrete measures. But I am convinced that there will be a coalition government, ”he said.
In the middle of the negotiations, an important judicial decision emerged that could make the agreements difficult. The Holiday Chamber of the Constitutional Court decided to “inadmit” for processing, with two votes in favor and one against -that of the progressive magistrate-, the appeal presented by the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont against his arrest warrant, issued last June 13 by the Supreme Court judge, Pablo Llareno.
Puigdemont, who has resided in Belgium since November 2017, a few days after the failed unilateral declaration of independence, continues to be the leader of Junts per Catalunya (JxCat), which has seven deputies in the Congress of Deputies, who are crucial to getting forward a future investiture of Sánchez. Or, where appropriate, to block it and thus force a new general election.
Puigdemont still has a criminal case open in Spain for the crimes of disobedience and embezzlement, after the crime of sedition was eliminated during the previous legislature. Hence, the decision of the Constitutional Court, in the middle of the vacation period, has been seen as a maneuver by the conservative judges to complicate the criminal situation of Puigdemont and the negotiations between the PSOE and the Catalan nationalists. In any case, the Prosecutor’s Office announced that it will file an urgent appeal arguing that there were no reasons for that appeal to be resolved by “urgency means” and not wait until a full plenary session was held, in which the bloc of progressive judges has a majority.
