The PSOE entered Congress this Thursday without a majority to be able to preside over it and, therefore, control it, and came out with 178 supporters –an absolute majority–, a right to brawl that was unable to reach an agreement and proclaiming Pedro Sánchez as only candidate for a possible investiture. This is how they summarized in Ferraz the first great session of the political course, that of the constitution of the Chamber. The Socialists, however, are cautious because the vote to elect Francina Armengol, the new third authority of the State, was not decided until discount time and does not predefine the future.
The PSOE assumes that "there is a lot of fabric to cut" in the coming weeks. But in La Moncloa they highlighted the "good smile" that Sánchez exhibited in the first great political duel of the course. That of 17-A was an initial victory for the socialists over the conservative bloc. There are 178 supports that do not guarantee the acting President of the Government a successful outcome of an investiture session, but they do give him a position of advantage in the face of the next round of consultations with King Felipe VI.
More forceful was the spokesman for the socialist parliamentary group, Patxi López. "There is only one possible president," he proclaimed after the plenary session. "We are going to work for a legislature of progress" and "today we are closer to achieving it," he added. The votes this Thursday, defended the former lehendakari, were "an exercise in parliamentary realism."
For the PSOE it is also "good news" that Vox is not part of the Congress Table. They also consider it "a message for Europe," said party sources.
The progressive bloc added 39 more votes than the one led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo and, in addition, managed to open a leak in the conservative one. The president of the PP, highlighted López, "assured that he had 172 deputies and he has 139" after the first great vote in parliamentary headquarters. Therefore, he concluded, "he has been unable to reach an agreement with anyone", except with UPN and CC, and "so he cannot appear for an inauguration." In Ferraz they bothered the "pressure" that, in his opinion, the PP has exerted on the head of state and they considered that, after the result of this Thursday, the possible candidacy of Feijóo would not be possible.
The PSOE was very careful not to venture what will happen in the round of consultations with the King and to maintain scrupulous respect for the procedure established in the Constitution. But the socialist spokesman has already pointed out the roadmap drawn up to try to tie up another majority: "Let politics be the one that solves political problems and not just justice." The search, he concluded, for “dialogue” and “understanding” to “add”, and “not to divide”, “to integrate all identities, and not to confront them”.
But not everything in the PSOE is good intentions for a possible investiture. The president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García Page, defined this Thursday, after the votes in Congress, the scenario as "a legislature with remote control" in the hands of Puigdemont. "And the command is so far away that it is outside of Spain," he added. He affirmed that the possible combinations for an investiture "has us all a little on edge, if not very worried."
