Congress controlled by the progressive majority led by the socialist group. The Senate guarded by the absolute majority of the Popular Party. This will be one of the scenarios of the political struggle of this legislature. The configuration of the parliamentary groups in both chambers already points to a first battle.
This week, in Congress, the socialist group has ceded four deputies to Junts so that the independentistas have their own group in the Lower House. Sumar has ceded another two deputies so that Esquerra Republicana has the same privilege that gives them a greater presence in the Chamber and also more financial resources.
On Monday afternoon, the Congress Table, with a progressive majority, should authorize, apparently without problems, these usual assignments in parliamentary practice and to which the House regulations do not oppose.
On the other hand, in the Senate the situation is quite different. The general coordinator of the Popular Party, Elías Bendodo, announced yesterday from Malaga that the PP will request a legal report from the services of the Upper House, which is now chaired by the popular Pedro Rollán, to evaluate the legality of these assignments that Bendodo himself described as "bartering".
The purpose of the Socialists in the Senate was to repeat the maneuver of the Congress and yield some of their senators so that the Junts, PNV and other forces of the left could have their own group.
Specifically, the socialist group has already promised to cede five senators to the Basque nationalists so that the PNV can reach the number of ten required for the constitution of its own group.
In the same way, he has agreed to give Junts another six senators that he lacks (with the probable sum of the representative of the Canary Islands Coalition) to be able to constitute his group.
The Senate Board will meet next Tuesday to evaluate these proposals and it is not clear if the legal report that the Popular Party is going to request will be available then.
The Senate's regulations are a little stricter than those of Congress for these types of favors. While in the Lower House the allocation of a sufficient number of deputies is only required for the registration of the group in the registry, in the Senate it is required that groups made up of a minimum of ten members continue to have this number throughout the legislature. Otherwise they are dissolved. It should be remembered that the number of senators fluctuates throughout the legislature since a part are appointed by the autonomous parliaments.
The truth is that, beyond the strictly technical requirements, it is striking that the Popular Party, which this week launched its negotiating will with two of the affected groups, the PNV and Junts per Catalunya, now sees in these loans a "bartering ”, as Bendodo described them, or “a half fraud”, as defined on Thursday by the PP deputy secretary, Borja Sémper.
It is even more surprising if one bears in mind that this practice is by no means a novelty of this legislature. On the contrary, it constitutes almost a tradition on which the first approximations between political formations at the beginning of the legislature are based. In the previous one, the popular group itself ceded a deputy to Ciudadanos, which had only nine representatives, so that it could continue to have its own group in the Senate, while the PSOE did the same with Izquierda Plural.
In this legislature, on the other hand, it seems that with the Popular Party having full control of the Senate Board, where it has an absolute majority, this practice will at least be subject to the verdict of the legal services.
All of this occurs on the stage of the Popular Party's negotiations to achieve sufficient support for Alberto Núñez Feijóo to obtain the four deputies he needs to achieve his investiture in the decisive vote on September 27.
In a press conference in Marbella, Elías Bendodo stated, in statements collected by the Efe news agency, that "a candidate has the obligation to attend parliamentary dialogue" because "dialogue is healthy and necessary."
"Talking to everyone does not mean that we are going to agree with everyone, it does not mean swallowing with everyone," he continued.
Faced with repeated questions about whether this dialogue also includes Junts, Bendodo appealed to "differentiate dialogue, negotiation, pact and agreement", to argue that "dialogue is necessary in the investiture", a scenario where, he specified, the candidate “proposes his government program”.
The Popular Party must start a round of talks in which all the groups except EH Bildu are included. However, this dialogue will not open immediately since the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, gave the candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, almost a month to gain support. In politics, a month is almost an eternity.
