A week after the King designated Pedro Sánchez as a candidate, the date for the investiture debate of the PSOE leader remains open.
The president of Congress, Francina Armengol, returned from Zarzuela on October 3 with the task for Sánchez to try to form a government. It is Armengol's exclusive responsibility to call the investiture debate, when she considers it appropriate, but always after consulting with the candidate. This is what the president of Congress did in August, when it was Alberto Núñez Feijóo's turn, and the president of the PP asked him for "a reasonable amount of time" to try to get more support. The plenary session was held on September 26 and 27.
Now it's Sánchez's turn. The acting President of the Government meets this Monday with Feijóo, in the round of conversations that he maintains with the parties represented in Congress, with the exception of Vox. Sánchez met last Wednesday with Vice President Yolanda Díaz, as leader of Sumar and potential partner of the coalition Executive, to advance the future agreement. And in the coming days there will be new meetings.
The PSOE needs to weave a complicated network of agreements on various sides. Sánchez is still far from having all the support he needs to overcome a vote in Congress. But he has seven weeks ahead to get them, before the automatic call for elections is activated, on November 27. Feijóo ruled out, there is no other possible candidate. So there is room for the leader of the PSOE.
And Sánchez will not be the first candidate who, after receiving the order from the head of state, postpones the holding of the plenary session for several weeks until he has secured the necessary votes. José María Aznar did it in the spring of 1996. After the general elections of March 3, the King designated the then leader of the PP as a candidate on April 13 and the president of Congress, Federico Trillo, left three weeks of margin for Aznar to will negotiate with CiU and the PNV. Trillo called the debate on May 3 and 4, when Aznar already had the votes.
A similar situation was experienced in the summer of 2016. The elections of December 20, 2015 left a very fragmented parliamentary arc, due to the emergence of Podemos and Ciudadanos, which made the support of several parties necessary to form a Government. Mariano Rajoy, despite being the most voted, did not have enough support and declined the King's commission. Sánchez tried and failed. There was then a repeat election, on July 26, 2016, and Rajoy won again, but needed time to negotiate. The president of Congress, Ana Pastor, from her party, did not call the investiture debate until August 30.
The last precedent must be found in the winter of 2019. On December 11 of that year, the King handed Sánchez the responsibility of forming a government, after the PSOE won the elections. The then president of Congress, the socialist Meritxell Batet, did not set the investiture plenary session until January 2, 23 days later, and the debate was held on January 4, 5 and 7.
Feijóo himself, in the letter he sent last August to Francina Armengol to ask her to give him time to negotiate the necessary support before submitting to the investiture debate, reminded her of the precedents in recent legislatures, when the nomination of a candidate by the King and the celebration of the investiture plenary session took between 46 and 24 days.
In the coming weeks, the PSOE will step on the accelerator to close agreements with the majority parties that it brought together for the constitution of the Congress Board, on August 17. In that block, along with the PSOE, were Sumar, ERC, Junts, EH Bildu, PNV and the BNG. Now it is time to repeat that pact with several bands, to which the Canarian Coalition could join. And it will be the tone of the legislature for all important votes.
The complexity of recent years to invest a candidate is a good example of how politics in Spain has changed since 2016. Previously, since 1979 and throughout eleven terms, candidates were invested without great difficulties, either by majority absolute or simple.
However, that dynamic changed starting with the general elections of December 2015. In the last three legislatures, of the five occasions in which the King proposed a candidate, only two times was the support of Congress obtained. In the current legislature, a new failure has already been achieved: that of Feijóo. And the viability of Sánchez's investiture is not guaranteed either.
