Almost a year ago, on October 9, 2022, Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo met for the last time in Moncloa. Everything foreshadowed that it would be of no use, because the purpose of this meeting was to agree on the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary. A year later, the mandate of the judges continues to be extended. There were other attempts: the letter that Feijóo sent on July 30 asking for an immediate meeting, which Sánchez rejected and postponed to the constitution of the Cortes. This portends that today in Congress nothing will change in the political landscape.
At least all indicators point in that direction. Feijóo, the candidate for the presidency of the Spanish Government in the investiture debate called for September 26, will claim before the acting president his right to try and, in all probability, will ask Sánchez to allow him to govern, already that the PP was the most voted party in the July elections. In the words of his spokesman, Borja Sémper, he will ask him to "go beyond the acronym" and try to find an approach.
Is possible? Sánchez's predictable answer will be the one he has repeated since 23-J, that the Spanish system does not say that whoever has the most votes should govern, but whoever gets the most support for his investiture and, although in the currently he does not have them secured, he has more chances of having them, unlike Feijóo, who has been nailed to the 172 seats of the PP and Vox groups and the two deputies of UPN and Coalició Canària.
Sánchez will also be able to remind you of the regional and municipal governments in which the PP has not respected the list with the most votes. This is the case of Extremadura, where the socialists obtained more votes but the sum of the deputies of PP and Vox ended up wresting the presidency from the socialist Guillermo Fernández Vara.
With this experience, the PSOE considers that Feijóo is not legitimized to ask anyone to allow him to govern because his is the most voted list. In addition, the PSOE already passed through here in October 2016, when it gave way to Mariano Rajoy as the most voted force. The Socialist Party almost explodes, and this is where the leadership of Pedro Sánchez was born.
Secondly, the Socialists have no interest in being nice to a party that, just a few days ago, was promoting the idea of Socialist MPs switching sides to support Feijóo. The socialists only hope that with this meeting the PP will "abandon the daily insult" to its formation and "adopt a constructive path for the country and the Spaniards". This was the consistent message of the PSOE spokesmen throughout the whole day yesterday in the mouth of the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez, who believes that this investiture will cause "Spain and the Spanish to lose a month", with a "dilatory attitude knowing that he will lose".
The national leadership of the PP rejects this accusation and recalls that the date was not set by Feijóo, but by the president of the Congress, Francina Armengol, in accordance with the regulations. The only thing the popular leader asked of the president of the Chamber, according to sources from the national leadership of the PP, assured La Vanguardia, was eight or ten days to make a round of contacts. Armengol decided the date, not Feijóo, they emphasize, and admit that it was because a failure of this investiture and that of Sánchez had led to the calling of elections for Christmas. To avoid this, only the first attempt could be postponed.
So, a dialogue of the deaf that will end in a disagreement and a rosary of mutual reproaches, because if the PSOE complains about the insults that Feijóo directed at it during the campaign, especially his allusions to "repeal Sanchism", the PP the grievances are similar, and they remember that from the first day that the leader of the PP faced Sánchez in the Senate, he referred to him with this phrase of "insolvency or bad faith", to discredit his good reputation manager
With the meeting with Sánchez, the president of the PP begins the round of announced contacts to try to seek the vote of the four deputies he lacks to obtain the absolute majority that the presidency gives him. A mission that the PP recognizes is "extraordinarily difficult", but that does not mean it will stop trying. On the one hand, because Feijóo is convinced that "it is not good, for Spain, for Sánchez to be president giving in to the pro-independence parties" and, secondly, because if his investiture does not go ahead, he will have been able to express to the Spanish the his project, in view of a hypothetical electoral repeat.
