"Short step and long view", recommends the acting Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, regarding the ongoing negotiations to build a new majority for investiture and legislature. And every day Pedro Sánchez takes another step on the complex path to his re-election. Yesterday, for the first time in public, the acting president of the Spanish Government uttered the word "amnesty".
Despite the fact that it is the key to being able to close an agreement with Junts and ERC, essential for his investiture, Sánchez carefully avoided pronouncing it until yesterday. And he did it, very significantly, in the presence of the presidents of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and of the European Council, Charles Michel, at the end of the informal meeting of the community club in Granada. All of Sánchez's steps are measured to the millimeter.
"We were in the case of Sumar's proposal, as we are also in the case of that of other political parties in relation to the amnesty", emphasized Sánchez about the initiatives promoted by Yolanda Díaz and the pro-independence formations. "It is still a way of trying to overcome the judicial consequences of the situation that Spain experienced with one of the worst territorial crises in the history of democracy in 2017", acknowledged the leader of the PSOE.
But he warned, as Bolaños also did yesterday in Barcelona, that Sumar's proposal "is not the position of the PSOE".
Sánchez insisted on his determination to achieve "a real investiture", to fulfill the King's order and the mandate of the Spanish at the polls, as opposed to the failed investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. "The Spanish have spoken, they have told us what the parliamentary representation of each and every group is," he alleged. And he assured that "the duty of all the parties is to try to work to understand each other and get a government in Spain as soon as possible". "And that's what I work on", he warned.
However, he claimed that he still cannot explain the scope of his possible agreement with Catalan independence. "I cannot anticipate an agreement until it takes place, because we are in full negotiations", he justified.
"What I can guarantee to the Spanish is that it will be an absolutely transparent and public agreement, when it takes place", he assured. With the same goal that he emphasized that has encouraged him since, five years ago, he settled in Moncloa: "Policies of progress and coexistence, within the framework of the Constitution".
He also guaranteed that all the agreements reached with the pro-independence formations will be within the Constitution, and will also be validated by the legislative power, with a majority in Congress. "And even, if they want to be appealed by the opposition, they will also be validated by the Constitutional Court", he affirmed without doubt.
But it's not time to reveal them yet. "The agreements will be made public when they are finalized. In other words, there will be no agreement until everything is agreed", he warned.
The leader of the PSOE also did not rule out that, in this process of talks, some member of his negotiating team could hold a meeting with the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who has fled from Spanish justice in Belgium since 2017. "We are in the process of negotiation Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed", he insisted.
And he announced that he will speed up negotiations with all the groups "so that there is a real investiture and the Spanish mandate is fulfilled". In fact, Sánchez will culminate next week the round of consultations that he started on Wednesday with Yolanda Díaz. On Monday, after meeting with the leaders of the UGT and CC.OO., he will hold a meeting with Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Tuesday, with the BNG and the PNB. Wednesday, with UPN, CC and ERC, in addition to the CEOE. And Friday, with EH Bildu and Junts.
Among the multiple fronts that must be reconciled for progress towards the investiture, Bolaños clarified that the PSOE negotiating team, made up of seven leaders, does not include Salvador Illa. The minister thus responded to the lack of confidence expressed by Puigdemont, in which he implied his opposition to the leader of the PSC having a leading role in the negotiation.
"We are seven colleagues who will work as a team in these conversations", said Bolaños. The message was addressed to Waterloo. Junts expressed a "lack of confidence" in the PSC's role in getting the mayor of Barcelona. But the electoral future in Catalonia has a lot to do with the struggle between the Catalan parties. Bolaños pointed out that, although Illa is not in the negotiating team, his role is fundamental "both in the present and in the future of Catalonia".
