“Everything already smells like an investiture,” they acknowledge in high places at the Moncloa, taking a deep breath, after the precipitation of “unequivocal signals” registered in recent days – from the recognition of the amnesty by the leader of the PSOE before the federal committee, to the meeting of Santos Cerdán with Carles Puigdemont in Brussels – which point to an imminent re-election of Pedro Sánchez as President of the Government.
Although always with the caution that such complex multi-party negotiations require – as they are very aware that any false step or misinterpreted gesture can make the agreement more expensive and difficult –, Moncloa and the PSOE leadership agree that “everything "It's on track." And they already reveal their intention to face Sánchez's investiture debate, if nothing goes wrong, "next week." To the race.
“We are going to the first vote, by absolute majority,” they say at the PSOE leadership. They are thus convinced that the full investiture debate in Congress will be held in only two sessions, without having to wait 48 hours for a second vote in which only a simple majority would be necessary for the PSOE leader to achieve his re-election. .
The president of Congress, Francina Armengol, is already scrutinizing next week's calendar to set the date of the plenary session, according to the investiture candidate.
Parliamentary sources indicate that Armengol wants to wait for Felipe VI to return from his next trip to Denmark – on November 7 and 8 – so that he can immediately go to the Zarzuela to inform the King of the result of the investiture debate as soon as it is over. In this way, November 8 and 9, or November 9 and 10, are being handled as possible dates for the plenary session of Congress. Sánchez plans to attend the closing of the congress of the European Socialist Party (PES) on Saturday, November 11, which will take place in Malaga.
But before the investiture plenary session takes place, the PSOE wants “a joint bill” to be registered in Congress, signed by all the parliamentary groups of the planned yes to Sánchez bloc, with the terms of the amnesty for the defendants of the process. The initiative, therefore, would be explicitly endorsed by up to 178 deputies made up of the socialist group, Sumar, Esquerra, Junts, EH Bildu, the PNV and the BNG. This absolute majority would guarantee the approval of the law in Congress, after having supported Sánchez's re-election as president.
The next relevant date on the calendar, for now, is next Friday, when Armengol will meet with the Congress Board and, later, with his board of spokespersons. If the amnesty bill had already been registered, the Board could qualify it. And if the date of the investiture debate was already agreed upon by Friday, Armengol could announce it that same day. We just have to wait for all the pieces of the Sánchez investiture puzzle to fit together, while the details of all the open negotiations are being finalized.
The meeting of the organization secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, with former president Carles Puigdemont, last Monday in Brussels, brings closer the agreement with Junts, which is the toughest nut to crack for the socialists in these complex negotiations.
The meeting lasted for an hour, and during it, according to socialist sources, they not only talked about Sánchez's investiture, but – “above all,” they highlight – also about the legislature. “Everything is progressing well,” they celebrate. The leader of the PSOE wants to guarantee stability in the new legislature, if he achieves re-election, for which it will be essential to be able to count, to begin with, on new general budgets of the State for next year.
In the Moncloa and the leadership of the PSOE they downplayed the fact that the meeting between Puigdemont and Cerdán took place under the significant image of one of the ballot boxes from the 1-O 2017 referendum. Both parties “agreed on” the setting of the meeting, according to the socialists point out, and also that the image of the ballot box from the independence consultation was barely visible in the photos and videos that the PSOE and Junts distributed after the meeting took place. In any case, the socialists claim, Cerdán put first the value of the “reunion” that Pedro Sánchez defends to face his investiture.
