The timer will start next Wednesday. When the first vote is taken for the investiture of candidate Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the two-month period for Congress to elect the new president of the Spanish Government will begin to run. Once this term has expired without white smoke, new general elections will be called for January 14.
The timer starts with the candidate for the presidency of the Government in opposition mode, something never seen before in Spain. Today he will preside over a rally in Madrid to denounce his opponent, while calling on Socialist deputies to break party discipline in the two votes that will take place this week. coming. Public calls for transfugism two days before the investiture debate. Another novelty in Spanish politics.
In the first vote (Wednesday 27) an absolute majority is necessary. In the second, a simple majority would suffice: more votes in favor than against. At the moment, the People's Party candidate does not have the numbers. It has 172 secure votes and an opposing front of 178 is emerging.
To ensure victory, Feijóo would have to count on the favorable vote of four socialist deputies next Friday, or the abstention of seven socialists, which would only be possible with a serious organic split in the PSOE. The abstention of the Basque Nationalist Party (five deputies) seems completely impossible after the visit of Andoni Ortuzar, president of the Euzkadi Buru Batzar, to Charles Puigdemont last week in Brussels.
At the moment there is no organic split in the PSOE, but there is an undercurrent due to the high-sounding criticisms being made by Felipe González, Alfonso Guerra and other former leaders, notable names that do not include all the party's old guard, where there is also significant support for Pedro Sánchez, among them former minister José María Maravall, the main intellectual inspirer of the Socialist Party in the 1980s. Former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is currently Sánchez's strongest support. Joaquín Almunia, general secretary between 1997 and 2000, remains in a cautious background.
Feijóo was proposed as a candidate by the King on August 22. The month of waiting has become long. He asked for time and the president of Congress granted it, among other reasons because it was necessary to organize the calendar so that the hypothetical holding of new elections did not coincide with the Christmas holidays.
The month of waiting for Feijóo has had two phases. At first, he sought the abstention of the PNB and sent messages in Morse code to Junts per Catalunya. At the beginning of September he discreetly interviewed Orduzar. This meeting, kept secret, was revealed this week by the PNB. In turn, the deputy general secretary of the PP, Esteban González Pons, Feijóo's most trusted person, switched from the Morse alphabet to the Latin alphabet in communications with Junts. The first step was to give them the interlocutor treatment: "Junts is a party whose tradition and legality are not in doubt", he said at the end of August. According to some unconfirmed journalistic information, González Pons would have interviewed Jordi Turull at the home of a Barcelona businessman during the summer. The Madrid PP was not at all in agreement with this strategy and would soon make it known.
After second vice president Yolanda Díaz met with Puigdemont in Brussels in early September, former president José María Aznar gave orders to stop. In an energetic intervention, Aznar tightened the veil of the right and called for the "rebellion". The rally that the Popular Party will hold today in Plaza Felip II in Madrid, in the Salamanca neighborhood, arose from this call to the "national debate". It was originally supposed to be an open event, but it was decided to avoid a photo with Vox.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Madrid PP and the Community of Madrid, will speak at the event. He couldn't stand aside. A short intervention has been planned so as not to detract from the prominence of the three main speakers: Feijóo, Aznar and Mariano Rajoy. New scenes of acclaim in Ayuso could weaken Feijóo 48 hours before he goes up to the podium of Congress to present his government program.
The candidate will also have to decide whether to use Galician in his parliamentary consecration. It is not a minor issue, if we take into account that his countrymen (2.7 million people) are used to hearing Feijóo in Galician, since this was his preferred language during the thirteen years he served as president of the Xunta from Galicia In a few months, next spring, there will be elections in Galicia, possibly synchronized with those in the Basque Country. The current president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, has this week defended the possibility of the Galician deputies of the PP expressing themselves in their language in Congress. For having spoken Basque in plenary last Tuesday, Borja Sémper, another man from the Feijóo circle, has received all kinds of insults and invectives. "You have to enter Genoa with a flamethrower" exclaimed the radio personality Federico Jiménez Losantos, demiurge of the hard right.
This same week, the PP tried to knock out Pedro Sánchez in Brussels by seeking to block the initiative for the official recognition of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the European Union. The veto of a single country at the meeting of the EU General Affairs Council would have shelved the case and this would have meant a hard stumble for the socialist leader in his attempt to attract Junts. The European People's Party moved in this direction. The governments of Sweden and Finland expressed reluctance. Italy and Poland, too. But there was no veto. Italy was about to present it, but the Government of Giorgia Meloni, which today marks one year since its electoral victory, is on the high seas, with a serious communication problem with France and Germany. They did not want to strain the ropes with Spain. This is called European politics.
Meeting of the PP. Pedro Sánchez at the Rose Festival of the PSC, in Gavà, and Alderdi Eguna (Day of the Party) of the PNB in Foronda (Álaba). vigilance sunday Madrid DF, bull.
