The outgoing Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, won his bet on Thursday at the opening of the parliamentary session, by having the Socialist candidate, Francina Armengol, elected as President of the Assembly, thanks to a last-minute agreement with the party representing the hard wing of Catalan separatism.
Ms. Armengol, 52, won 178 votes in the first round, two more than the majority required, thanks to the votes of the seven deputies of Junts per Catalunya (JxCat, Together for Catalonia), the party led by the independence leader Carles Puigdemont, exiled in Belgium and wanted by Spanish justice since the failure in 2017 of an attempt to secede from Catalonia.
Even if it was only a first round, this agreement between the Socialist Party and Mr. Puigdemont is important, because it gives a first positive indication on the chances of Mr. Sánchez to be invested Prime Minister again in the next few days and thus avoid new elections.
JxCat revealed on its site shortly after the vote that the agreement, reached in the early hours of the morning, included four points, the first being “the recognition of Catalan as an official language of the European Union”.
Mr Sánchez had himself made this proposal on Wednesday, highlighting the fact that Spain held the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU until the end of the year and promising to use this position to obtain that Catalan, but also Basque and Galician, become official languages ??of the EU.
In her first speech as President of the Assembly, Ms Armengol announced that Catalan, as well as Basque and Galician, which have the status of official languages ??in Spain, could now be used in the Congress. This is the second point of the agreement with Junts.
The other two points relate to the creation of a commission of inquiry into the jihadist attack of August 17, 2017 in Catalonia (six years ago to the day) and another commission of inquiry into spying on Catalan separatist leaders using Israeli-made Pegasus software.
The agreement falls far short of the demands of Junts, which has two fundamental demands: an amnesty for all those convicted of Catalonia’s failed secession attempt and a self-determination referendum.
For both legal and political reasons, it was unthinkable that Mr. Sánchez would accede to these demands. Mr. Puigdemont has therefore waived these demands for the moment, preferring to obtain concrete gains.
Junts, however, warns on its website that “this agreement is limited” to the election of the presidency and the eight members of the Assembly bureau “and has no connection with the investiture” of the next Prime Minister, who will constitute the main battle and will require new negotiations.
Despite this warning, Mr. Sánchez’s horizon brightened on Thursday, especially as his rival Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the People’s Party (PP, right), who is also claiming the post of Prime Minister, experienced a stinging failure during this opening session of Parliament.
His candidate for the presidency of the Assembly, Cuca Gamarra, who hoped to obtain 172 votes and therefore thought he could win in the event of abstention from the deputies of Junts, finally received only 139 votes, namely those of the 137 deputies of the PP and elected representatives of two small regional parties.
The 33 deputies of Vox, a far-right party on which the PP depended, voted for their own candidate.
This division illustrates the tumultuous relations, because very ambiguous, between the PP, a center-right party, and Vox, a formation ultra ideologically close to the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the head of the Italian government Giorgia Meloni.
Since the legislative elections of July 23, which had seen the PP once again become the country’s leading party, but far from an absolute majority, Mr. Feijóo has been demanding to be appointed to appear before the deputies in order to submit to a vote of investiture , justifying his demand by the fact that his party is the one having had the most seats.
Mr. Sánchez had retorted to him on Wednesday that “in Spain, the one who governs is the one who obtains the most support”, in other words who can muster a majority. He also accused the PP of “putting pressure” on King Felipe VI, who is responsible for choosing the candidate for the nomination.
From this point of view, Thursday’s vote showed that Mr. Feijóo did not have a majority, since even Vox failed him.
17/08/2023 15:40:24 – Madrid (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
