The PSOE is not in a hurry, but Sumar is. The coalition government successfully rehearsed the good cop, bad cop game during the previous legislature in many of its most difficult negotiations with the complex investiture majority and in almost all of these cases it did so successfully. Faced with the progressive and independence bloc, Unidas Podemos cultivated better relations than the socialists, and Sumar today has that heritage and that agenda that it has decided to put into operation immediately to guarantee the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, that is, to guarantee the revalidation of the coalition government. Sumar's spokesman, Ernest Urtasun, announced the start of these contacts last Monday, barely 12 hours after the electoral count, and confirmed the night before last that they are already underway, while reserving the content of the conversations, which They are being held under a mutual commitment of maximum discretion: "Now is the time to talk, negotiate and find a way to reach some kind of agreement, and above all to maintain a certain degree of confidentiality in these negotiations in the coming days", Urtasun pointed out on Thursday night, on RTVE.
The spokesman assumed a gallant role for Add by assuring that the left-wing coalition would not be placed "in the background nor will we allow the PSOE to negotiate directly with Junts", asserting its best relations with both Junts and ERC. “We will be totally proactive, not only when talking with ERC and Junts, but also with all the forces involved”, emphasized Urtasun, who added that at Sumar “they will find us looking for solutions, presenting proposals, listening carefully and building bridges”. Hence the determining role that the formation of Yolanda Díaz has conferred on Jaume Asens, former president of the United Podemos confederal group and the politician of the commons who has cultivated the most direct and fluid personal relationships over the years both with the leader of Esquerra, Oriol Junqueras, as with the former president of the Generalitat and leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont.
It is known, because it was confirmed by the leader of the commons, Jessica Albiach, that Junts has put on the table issues to be discussed, such as the referendum and amnesty tandem, but at the same time, Albiach herself pointed out that the logic of all negotiations is that one has to sit down at the table with a catalog of maximum demands and that, in any case, what determines this dialogue is not the starting points of the parties, but the spaces of agreement that can be built between the positions.
While the PSOE takes the negotiation calmly, waiting to find out if the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, as number one on the most voted list, attempts the investiture, Sumar greases the negotiations with each other. The Basque front, in any case, is clear, since the PNV nipped in the bud the threat of negotiation of the PP, although it announced that it would not give away a favorable vote in the investiture, given the breaches of the Socialists in the last legislature. EH Bildu did not want to maintain any intrigue and has already announced that, faced with the alternative of an electoral repetition that gives a second chance to a right-wing government with the ultra-right, his vote would be affirmative to invest Sánchez.
Although receptive to the dialogue with Sumar, Junts and ERC hope, in any case, that the negotiation of the investiture agreement is closed with the PSOE, not with its possible minority partner, and they agree with the claim of the PNV, which denounced this week the absence of a socialist road map to address the territorial problem.
The dialogue between the PSOE and Sumar is fluid, both say, but informal. For the moment, the Socialists have not responded to Sumar's urging to close the structure and program of the possible coalition government as soon as possible. The contrast with 2019 is evident: if in April Sánchez put the negotiations on hold, which finally failed in July, after the electoral repetition of November PSOE and Unidas Podemos took just 48 hours to have an agreement to govern together. But then there was the urgency of the revolt of the socialist party itself against Sánchez, a threat that after 23-J has been diluted.
