Almost a year ago, on October 9, 2022, Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo met for the last time at Moncloa. Everything suggested that it was going to be of no use, because the purpose of that meeting was to agree on the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary. One year later, the mandate of the judges continues to be extended. There were other attempts: the letter that Feijóo sent on July 30 asking for an immediate meeting that Sánchez rejected and postponed the constitution of the Cortes. This augurs that today in Congress nothing is going to change in the political landscape.
At least all indicators point in that direction. Feijóo, the candidate for the presidency of the Government in the investiture debate called for September 26, will claim before the acting president his right to try and, in all probability, will ask Sánchez to allow him to govern, given that the PP was the most voted party in the July elections. In the words of his spokesperson, Borja Sémper, he will ask them to "go beyond acronyms" and try to find a rapprochement.
It's possible? Sánchez's foreseeable response will be the one he has been repeating since 23-J, that the Spanish legal system does not say that whoever has had the most votes has to govern, but whoever gets the most support for his investiture and, although he currently does not have them insured , has a better chance of having us, not like Feijóo, who has been stuck in the 172 seats of the PP and Vox groups and the two deputies from UPN and the Canary Coalition.
Sánchez, in addition, will be able to remind you of the regional and municipal governments in which the PP has not respected the most voted list. Such is the case of Extremadura, where the socialists obtained more votes but the sum of the deputies of PP and Vox ended up wresting the presidency from the socialist Guillermo Fernández Vara.
With this experience, the PSOE considers that Feijóo does not have the legitimacy to ask anyone to allow him to govern because his is the list with the most votes. In addition, the PSOE already passed through there in October 2016, when it gave way to Mariano Rajoy as the most voted force. The Socialist Party almost exploded, and there the leadership of Pedro Sánchez was born.
Secondly, the Socialists have no interest in being nice to a party that, just a few days ago, encouraged the idea that Socialist deputies would change sides to support Feijóo. The Socialists only hope that with this meeting the PP "abandons the daily insult" to its formation and "adopts a constructive path for the country and the Spanish people." That was the coincidental message from the PSOE spokespersons throughout yesterday in the mouths of Defense Ministers, Margarita Robles, and Spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, who believes that this investiture will cause "Spain and the Spanish to lose a month”, with a “delaying attitude knowing that he is going to lose”.
The national leadership of the PP rejects this accusation and recalls that the date was not set by Feijóo, but by the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, in accordance with the regulations. The only thing that the popular leader asked of the president of the Chamber, according to sources from the national leadership of the PP, assured La Vanguardia, were eight or ten days to make a round of contacts. Armengol decided the date, not Feijóo, they emphasize, and they admit that it was because a failure of that investiture and that of Sánchez would have led to the call for elections at Christmas. To avoid this, only the first attempt could be postponed.
Thus, a dialogue of the deaf that will end in a disagreement and a string of mutual reproaches, because if the PSOE complains about the insults directed at it by Feijóo in the campaign, especially his allusions to "repealing sanchismo", in the PP they The grievances are similar, and they recall that from the first day the PP leader confronted Sánchez in the Senate, he referred to him with that phrase of "insolvency or bad faith", to discredit his reputation as a good manager.
With the meeting with Sánchez, the president of the PP begins the round of contacts announced to try to seek the vote of the four deputies that he lacks to achieve the absolute majority that will give him the presidency of the Government. A mission that in the PP recognizes that it is "extraordinarily difficult", but that is not why it is going to stop trying. On the one hand, because Feijóo is convinced that "it is not good, for Spain, for Sánchez to be president, giving in to the independentistas", and secondly, because if his inauguration does not go ahead, he will have been able to express his project to the Spaniards, facing a hypothetical electoral repetition.
