“Bon dia, bos dias, egun on, good morning,” the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, opened the session early this Thursday morning, in a plenary session in which the parliamentary debate was once again expressed. in Catalan, Basque, Galician and Spanish. Barely at mid-morning, and with Pedro Sánchez already sitting in his seat, having just arrived from New York, the express processing of the reform of the regulations of the Lower House has been completed, with an absolute majority that, previously, has rejected the amendments registered by the Popular Party and the far-right Vox, to endorse the normalization of the use of co-official languages at the seat of national sovereignty.
The Socialist Group, Sumar, Esquerra, Junts, EH Bildu, the PNV, the BNG and the Canarian Coalition have once again added their 179 seats in the final vote on the reform of the regulations of the new plurilingual Congress. And, on this occasion, another isolated seat, with a probably wrong vote, has raised the figure to 180 yeses. Against, the PP, Vox and UPN have remained at 170 noes to the initiative. This absolute majority of 179 votes is, in any case, the parliamentary arithmetic that Pedro Sánchez hopes to repeat for his new investiture as President of the Government, after next week the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo fails, as expected. .
“This way the Parliament will be more like Spain. Recognizing diversity enriches us as a country and strengthens our democracy,” celebrated the acting Minister of the Presidency, the socialist Félix Bolaños.
The far-right of Vox has been left alone in the previous defense of its amendment to the entirety against the proposal to reform the regulations of Congress. Only the 33 deputies of Santiago Abascal have voted in favor of the Vox amendment. The Popular Party has not supported them, but has abstained. The amendment was defeated by an absolute majority of 179 votes. The same one that has rejected the three amendments registered by the PP, although in this case, Vox has added its votes to those of the Feijóo bench. On the other hand, the amendment presented by the PNV has been the only one accepted, with 178 votes in favor, so that all the communications and interventions of the Congress in Catalan, Basque and Galician, with legal value, are published as an authentic version.
“From today onwards this Chamber will be as Spain is, plural and multilingual,” celebrated, on behalf of the Socialist Group, and in a speech in Catalan and Spanish, the PSC deputy for Girona Marc Lamuà. The socialist leader has instead criticized the opposition of the PP and Vox. “What a small, weak and reactionary Spain you draw!” He has reproached them. Instead, he has defended that “today the strong Spain is that of Pedro Sánchez.”
“Today the PSOE puts Spain up for sale!”, however, warned the Popular Party spokesperson, Borja Sémper. On this occasion, after the controversy that arose in the plenary session last Tuesday in his own bench, the Basque deputy has intervened in Spanish. “Egun on” are the only words in Basque that Sémper spoke today, at the beginning of his speech.
Sémper, in any case, has accused the socialists of acting according to the dictates of Waterloo, where Carles Puigdemont has resided, fleeing from Spanish justice since 2017. “The independentists demand and you grant,” he lamented. “What is the limit of Pedro Sánchez's transfers to obtain his investiture?” the PP leader questioned. “There are no limits,” he denounced. And he has warned that the next payment will be the amnesty law for those prosecuted by the process.
The PP spokesperson has once again defended Spanish as a common language, for which no deputy needs a translation. And he has warned the PSOE that the objective of the independence movement “is not to defend its own language, but to deny the common language.” The popular bench, led by Feijóo himself, has given a round of applause to Sémper, to put an end to last Tuesday's controversy.
The spokesperson for Vox, María José Rodríguez de Millán, has warned, in the same sense, that the objective of Pedro Sánchez, due to his “desire for excessive power” to remain in Moncloa, is “to please those who want to break our unity and coexistence". And like the PP, she has warned that the next payment will be “the granting of an amnesty to those who have carried out a coup d'état” in Catalonia. The leader of the far-right has warned that Sánchez “is trying to repeat from Moncloa the coup that took place from the Generalitat in 2017.”
