Information blackout in Parliament due to investiture negotiations in Congress

The negotiations for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez in the Congress of Deputies, conducted with maximum discretion by the main actors involved, are having as a side effect an information blackout in the Parliament of Catalonia, where the PSC has already twice called off the usual roundtable.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
16 October 2023 Monday 16:35
5 Reads
Information blackout in Parliament due to investiture negotiations in Congress

The negotiations for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez in the Congress of Deputies, conducted with maximum discretion by the main actors involved, are having as a side effect an information blackout in the Parliament of Catalonia, where the PSC has already twice called off the usual roundtable. press conferences on Tuesdays and ERC and Junts have not even managed to set any of their parliamentary spokespersons on the agenda in the last two weeks.

Socialist sources explain that the silence is due to the desire not to intercede in the conversations that the PSOE has undertaken with the parties of Oriol Junqueras and Carles Puigdemont to obtain their vote in favor of Sánchez, especially when the first secretary of the PSC himself, Salvador Illa , is playing a relevant role in seeking the agreement and, for example, is in Ferraz today.

As things stand, it is the minority groups that are taking advantage of the situation to seek prominence: Citizens, to show their rejection of any approach that implies an amnesty for the facts related to the process, and the commons, for the opposite: to defend that precisely criminal oblivion is the way to resolve the "political conflict" that Catalonia is experiencing. And both, to place under focus the issues that concern them and of which they champion.

Be that as it may, parliamentary activity continues its course and today the Board and the board of spokespersons have met to set the agenda for the next plenary session, which will take place next week, on October 24, 25 and 26. It has not finally included the monographic debate on Rodalies requested last week by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, in what represents a new call for attention from the opposition regarding the small minority on which the Government relies.

Historically, and out of "parliamentary courtesy", the president has been able to accelerate the holding of those debates that he considered appropriate to bring to the plenary session and that he promoted on his own initiative. But this time the opposition, particularly the PSC and Junts groups, each of them with a parliamentary weight similar to that of ERC, has relegated the monograph proposed by Aragonès and has not allowed it to go ahead of other debates that had been requested with anteriority. A new example of the loneliness of the Government, whose initiatives the Parliament has put on the back burner by not enjoying a sufficient majority in the Chamber.

Thus, in the next plenary session a monographic debate on energy will be held, which combines the requests by Junts and the PSC on the matter. Next, on November 7, 8 and 9, the Parliament will host another monographic debate on security, proposed by the PSC, and it will not be until the end of November, in the plenary session on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd, when The president will be able to put his proposals to a vote to solve the problems of the Rodalies network.

ERC sources have criticized the alliance of Junts and the PSC, to which Vox has joined in the meeting of spokespersons, to make their interests prevail and place the debate on security ahead of that of Rodalies, which will be held in this way when The deadline to invest a new President of the Government is about to expire, on November 27. In the background of the issue, in any case, is the will of the opposition groups for the Government not to take credit for the demand for the transfer of the suburban network, one of the demands that ERC has raised to support the investiture