The Sports Press Association of Madrid announced this Wednesday the death of sports journalist Fernando Llamas, 63, who in his last stage belonged to the Unidad Editorial staff, after a long professional career and passing through the newsrooms of Marca, As, El Sol, El Independiente and the newspaper Ya.

Fernando Llamas, always versatile in all newsrooms, stood out during his more than 30 years in the profession for his extensive knowledge of cycling, athletics or motoring, and his personal empathy, which helped him win the affection of his colleagues in the sector..

Fernando Llamas has passed away. Receive our last hug, mate. @prensadeportMAD https://t.co/WoSnG6zDQP pic.twitter.com/zoaEuM6C4z

– APDM (@prensadeportMAD) July 27, 2023

“Fernando was a journalist who managed two essential elements of this profession: mental acuity and his openness to the changes that were taking place in it.. Fernando Acha, his colleague at El Mundo, defined him on his LinkedIn profile as an experienced journalist with a solid background, which makes him a rarity.. These qualities, together with an open mind, allow him to adapt to any work environment, always with excellent results..

“Another of his qualities is his temperance. In the 10 years that we worked together, I don't remember a single occasion in which I saw him lose his temper,” underlines the APDM, chaired by José Damián González. The mortal remains of Fernando Llamas are in the Las Rozas funeral home (Madrid). For his part, Julián Redondo, president of the Spanish Sports Press Association, colleague and friend of Fernando Llamas, highlighted in an article in El Mundo that “Lleims, for friends, was an all-rounder, and very good people. And independent “.

• Fire in Gran Canaria today, last minute: the Puntagorda fire in Tejera, La Palma, is reactivated live

The Puntagorda forest fire, on the island of La Palma, has been reactivated in La Caldera de Taburiente, as reported by the island's Cabildo.

It has also indicated that land and air resources are already in place available on the island to work on the operation in order to extinguish it..

This fire was declared on July 15 and finally controlled on July 22, moving to Level 1 Emergency, as established in the Special Plan for Civil Protection and Emergency Attention for Forest Fires in the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands ( INFOCA).

The fire is “boxed in”

The president of the Cabildo de La Palma, Sergio Rodríguez, has indicated that the Puntagorda forest fire that has been reactivated in the burned perimeter in the Las Cañeras ravine, within La Caldera de Taburiente, is “boxed in”.

Rodríguez explained, in statements to the media, that the column of smoke is heading “towards the previously burned area and it seems that there is a thermal inversion that is taking the smoke to the east side, which is good news among the bad ones. “.

At this time, he has indicated that a GES helicopter from the Canary Islands government is operating, which has carried out “several drops on the west flank”, and four more air means are activated, which “are on their way”.

We are still pending the monitoring of #IFPuntagorda pic.twitter.com/m34pmApFAU

— Sergio Rodríguez (@SergioRdgzCC) July 27, 2023

Likewise, he pointed out that the area where action is being carried out “is complicated” from the orographic point of view, for which reason he qualified that the ground personnel “are displaced but will not be able to act if they do not advance to more safe positions” from the fire.

At the moment, he pointed out, the “only positive” is that the weather “is not bad, there is no wind, visibility is allowing the air environment to act and we have to wait for the evolution”.

As for the roads, the access road to Los Brecitos is closed and the evacuation of the Hacienda del Cura, in El Paso, has been ordered, where there are no people staying.

The parents of a baby accused of causing serious injuries by shaking him have been sentenced to three years in prison after the trial in Criminal Court number 4 of Oviedo. The ruling coincides with what was requested by the Prosecutor's Office of the Principality of Asturias.

Thus, the mother of the baby, born in 1997, and the father, born in 1994, both residents of Oviedo, have been convicted as perpetrators of a crime of serious injury with aggravated relationship..

In addition to three years in prison for each one, the ruling also includes the disqualification for the exercise of parental authority as well as the right to passive suffrage during the time of the sentence.. It also points out the prohibition to approach the minor at less than 500 meters and to communicate with him for eight years.

Likewise, compensation of 300,000 euros is set for the minor and Sespa for the amount of the assistance provided plus late-payment interest, as well as the payment of costs between the two convicted persons..

There is an appeal against the sentence, within a period of 10 days from the day following its notification, before the Provincial Court of Oviedo.

Prosecutor's account

According to the account of the Public Prosecutor's Office, the minor, born prematurely in March 2021, lived in Oviedo with his parents in the company of another underage sister, and was admitted to the emergency department of the Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias (HUCA) in a coma in the early morning of August 1 of that same year with a sudden deterioration of the general state.

“The defendants carried out these acts with the purpose of undermining the physical integrity of the minor but without duly taking into account his fragility, given his age and premature birth, and without representing the consequences that could cause him,” he pointed out, emphasizing that “the minor He required medical-pediatric treatment to stabilize his injuries”.

In this regard, the Prosecutor's Office indicated that he was left with hypotonia, visual alteration and psychomotor retardation and irritability, with the risk of developing infantile paralysis or psychomotor retardation or visual disability pending his evolution.. “Given its development, it will require, at the very least, ongoing pediatric care, therapist support, rehabilitation, speech therapy, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy,” he added.

The Civil Guard has dismantled a network that sold almost 600 tons of olives with false documentation in towns in the province of Seville and it is suspected that the sale was made under these conditions to launder money. The operation, with seven investigated, has been carried out by the Roca team of the Civil Guard of the Osuna Company, within a campaign aimed at investigating and clarifying the criminal acts that occurred during the entire olive harvest period..

During the so-called Operation Madroño 23 and with the collaboration of farmers, rural security personnel, associations and other collaborating entities, 18 crimes of theft of important olives were clarified, 28 people were investigated as perpetrators of these crimes and around 30,000 kilograms of olives, intervened in the different actions.

As a result of this investigation and in parallel, a new operation began, in which the agents focused on olive purchase stalls located in the Sierra Sur Sevillana, where the presence of groups of people transporting olives covered with documents was detected. of accompaniment of the fruit (DAT) that raised the suspicions of the agents in relation to their origin.

With the support of the Territorial Delegation of Agriculture of Seville, sufficient evidence was obtained that proved the commission of numerous crimes of forgery in the public documents used in the activities carried out by the people responsible for the olive purchase centers..

Due to these facts, the investigation of seven people was carried out as alleged perpetrators of alleged crimes of falsification in public documents and it was shown that 553,849 kilos of olives were delivered and ground under the protection of falsified documentation..

In addition to submitting the proceedings to the Investigating Courts of Osuna and Estepa to determine criminal responsibilities, an extensive report was drawn up that was addressed to the Territorial Delegation of Agriculture in Seville in order to determine if there could also be administrative ones in relation to the food traceability of the product.

Sumar has started negotiations with Compromís to give the Valencian supporters a differentiated status within their parliamentary group. The leadership of Yolanda Díaz's party held a videoconference meeting the day before yesterday with the co-spokespersons of the Valencian coalition and at the same time imminent deputies in Congress, Àgueda Micó (Més) and Alberto Ibáñez (Iniciativa), to discuss details of the distribution of tasks and resources , once the Cortes Generales are constituted on August 17.

The details of the conversation have not come to light, but Compromís sources affirm that the coalition aspires to have its “own voice” in the Sumar bench, in the style of the pact that the Catalan communes signed with United We Can in the last legislature and that they will now repeat probably. The protocol signed by the two parties for July 23 obliges them to explore “all possible legal avenues for the constitution of their own parliamentary group made up of the deputies obtained” by the electoral coalition. This is an apparently unfeasible option, because the Sumar-Compromís list did not achieve the five deputies nor the 15% in each constituency (Castellón, Valencia and Alicante) for which it was presented to the polls, although it was close, only to 5,000 Vox votes in Castellón, which would have given him the fifth seat and 15% in the three provinces.

Other formations of territorial scope such as ERC and Junts are exploring ways of collaboration to meet the requirements together and form a parliamentary group, something very subject to the interpretation of the Table of Congress, hence there are many options for a negotiation to take place with the PSOE, Sumar and other forces such as the PNV and Bildu to promote an alternative majority to PP and Vox in the management body of Parliament. The capacity for political action and economic resources are at stake.

The pact with Sumar contemplates that, in the event that their own group is not possible, “the chosen deputies will be integrated into the framework group of the coalition as a whole under the principles of mutual respect, horizontality and territorial autonomy with their own voice that will remain institutionalized in the group's operating regulations”, is written in the protocol. This, say sources from the Valencian formation, should translate into a sort of subgroup with a deputy spokeswoman, the ability to present initiatives, freedom to vote on matters that are not shared and “not diluting the brand”, that is, having differentiated times in Interventions to explain the singularity of Compromís.

The agreement also contemplates a distribution of resources and advisers proportional to the representation obtained (two deputies out of 31) and that Compromís receives 5% of the subsidy to parties that corresponds to Sumar.

For Compromís, abandoning Sumar's parliamentary discipline is not part of the script, at least for now. This was what happened in the 2016 experience with Podemos, when Pablo Iglesias refused to cede a deputy so that the four Valencian representatives of the electoral coalition could form their own group in Congress. There was a fracture and they ended up in the mixed group. The appointments of April and November 2019 were very different. Due to the distrust, Compromís decided to run alone, but only obtained a single seat, that of Baldoví.

Sumar's experiment, with Iglesias out of the equation and with complicity generated both with Díaz and with leaders of Más País such as Íñigo Errejón, has a vocation for permanence, according to coalition sources, despite the fact that the sovereignist sectors of Més are suspicious of reach agreements with state-level formations and defend solo competition. “If the agreement is fulfilled so that Compromís has its own voice, we do not have to leave,” they explain. The resource benefits of staying inside are greater than those of the mixed group, they add..

But there is another factor that will make the break more complicated. The agreement with Sumar has made Compromís the Díaz brand in the Valencian Community. The party of the vice president of the Government and acting Minister of Labor does not have any structure in the territory. To fill his gaps in the candidacies, he has drawn on people from Podemos such as Txema Guijarro. The purple ones are dismasted, practically disappeared from the Valencian map after the sinking of May 28. Some former members of Podemos, such as Antonio Estañ or César Jiménez, had already been collaborating with Compromís.

The options of having a life of its own for Sumar go through handing over its flag to the Valencianistas or one of the parties that make it up. It is the window defended by cadres of the Iniciativa del Poble Valencià dissatisfied with the organic weight that the nationalist wing of Compromís, Més, is exerting within the coalition since the resignation of Mónica Oltra. The replacement of Carles Mulet as senator and his replacement by the former president of the Cortes Enric Morera has given arguments to those who are not afraid to take risks and set up a new project, even if it is once again fragmenting the space of the left of the PSOE. This split, however, will always be more difficult with Compromís within the Sumar parliamentary group in Congress.

He tried it first with a partner, who managed to get away when he saw the knife. But she tried again with a man who wasn't so lucky. He received a stab wound that forced him to be transferred to the Regional Hospital of Malaga. The National Police arrested an individual who mobilized several patrols on Monday night after an armed man threatened and tried to rob several people with whom he was.

The events were recorded in the neighborhood of La Palmilla, the scene in recent weeks of several violent episodes. The protagonist was a young man who, armed with a knife, caused some alarm by trying to carry out several consecutive robberies.. Police sources indicated that everything happened between 10:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., after the person under investigation tried to rob a couple who were walking in the area.. The young man, brandishing the weapon, allegedly asked them for the money they were carrying and threatened that “he was going to kill someone.”. But the victims managed to avoid it and escape.

The situation worsened when he came across a 51-year-old man to whom he stabbed, hitting his hand.. Local Police units were the first to come and assist the injured man, who was initially treated by ambulance personnel before being transferred to the Regional hospital, as he had a cut that required stitches..

Members of the National Police joined the search that the municipal agents had started and carried out a raid through the areas adjacent to the scene of the incident that would end with the arrest of the alleged attacker.. This was located by national police on Antonio María Isola street. “He did not carry the knife, but he resisted arrest,” said the aforementioned sources, who added that the individual is accused of robbery with violence and intimidation and injuries.

This attack with a knife was followed by another that occurred on Monday night in Marbella and that left a young man with a stab wound between the neck and clavicle..

The incident occurred around 11:40 p.m. on Vázquez Delgado street, in the Miraflores neighborhood of Marbella, where a fight broke out between two people and one of them attacked the other with a knife, according to witnesses alerting Emergencies 112 Andalusia.

The National Police and the health services mobilized to the place, who transferred the victim, a 27-year-old man, to the Costa del Sol hospital. He did not fear for his life.

The agents arrested the alleged perpetrator, hours later, early Tuesday morning. Apparently, it could be two drug addicts.

The results of 23-J have already provoked reactions in the parties that have been beaten. Or, at least, in some of those who received a severe setback. The CUP, which lost its parliamentary representation, will open a “refoundation” process to face the future. The anti-capitalist formation went from 246,971 votes to only 98,794, and its two deputies stayed at home. The leader of the list for the demarcation of Barcelona, Albert Botran, leaves the front line of politics.

The decline of the CUP is similar to that of the other pro-independence parties. ERC went from 874,859 votes to only 462,883, losing six seats along the way (remaining with seven), and Junts per Catalunya, despite losing a single representative (dropped from eight to seven), also dropped from 530,225 supports to 391,634. In these two large formations, there was no assumption of political responsibilities or any reflection on the electoral downturn.

But the CUP has always been consistent with its principles. His secretariat addressed a letter to the militancy making self-criticism. “There has not been a good reading of the situation, the climate, the moment, the exhaustion and the fatigue,” says the letter, referring to the current political climate. Therefore, “it has not been up to the task when it comes to building those spaces and structures necessary to make qualitative leaps on an organizational and political scale”. Hence, it offers “to open a process of deep strategic debate, with the complexity and the necessary spaces, which allows a process of refounding the popular unity project”.

The anti-capitalist formation had already received a certain setback in the municipal elections last May: it went from 176,474 votes to 133,403 and from 334 to 313 councilors. It was the first wake-up call that, in any case, he intended to transfer to the bases to begin a process of internal discussion on the strategy to follow. But the call for general elections cut short his calendar and forced him to postpone his plans until next fall..

The great bump in the general elections aggravated the internal situation and sounded all the alarms. The first consequence is the announcement by the leader of the list for Barcelona, Albert Botran, to leave the first political line. Botran is quite a symbol within the formation: he was a deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia and is a representative of Poble Lliure, the largest of the parties that make up the CUP. In fact, he is one of the intellectual mainstays of the party and a respected activist both inside and outside his party..

“We must focus on municipalism”

The same election night, Botran came to the fore to acknowledge that his formation had not been able to lead the way, that the results obtained were bad, but he sent a forceful message: “No one is going home here, because we have a duty to the country and your people”. Just a few days later, the head of the Barcelona list takes a step to the side. “It is not contradictory to what he said. Albert will no longer be on the front line, but he will continue working for the CUP project from within the organization,” says a source from Cuba..

They also stress that the objective at this time is “to reorganize and mobilize, because the anti-capitalist, pro-independence, feminist and environmental commitment remains intact”. Another source points out that Botran's decision is “honest and logical” and emphasizes that the anti-capitalist formation “must recover its work in municipalism, a place to which it should have dedicated itself and from which it should not have left, because it is from where it is most can influence change in the system and power structures”. The sources do not pronounce on the null assumption of responsibilities in other parties. “Let each one rule his house. The transparency and coherence of the CUP are evident with the latest initiatives announced ”, insist the sources.

It should not be forgotten that the party only ran for municipal elections until a decade ago. At the end of 2012, he decided to run for the regional elections for the first time in his history, winning three seats and 126,219 votes.. And in November 2019, he made the leap to the Congress of Deputies, achieving two representatives and 246,971 votes.

The anti-capitalist formation now has a long way to go. The start of the re-foundation will begin in mid-September, when the CUP holds its Summer School, under the slogan “Life will be better to come”, in reference to the stanza of the song “The united people will never be defeated”.. With this, he will also pay tribute to Chilean President Salvador Allende, deposed 50 years ago by the coup d'état by General Augusto Pinochet, and to singer Víctor Jara, assassinated during that military revolt..

The Political Council of the CUP must now give the green light to the refoundation process, in a period of time that is expected to last until May 2024, just in time to organize the next regional elections, which could be brought forward to the end of next year.. What has been decided in this period is a new road map, “putting on the table the new needs in view of the political situation of the country”. This process, according to the formation, must have the maximum participation of the militancy, of the territorial councils and of spaces for debate or work groups that are under the mantle of the organization, until all this leads to a national assembly.. There, “the new strategic and organizational proposal” of the training will be approved, electing a new management leadership..

The fiasco of 23-J has reactivated the debate on the leadership of the PP silenced a year and a half ago. And all the spotlights point once again to Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The president of the Community of Madrid, always challenged by her supposed political aspirations, has gotten used to living on the trigger and this time is no exception. The woman from Madrid lives in a kind of continuous suspicion, forced to explain and clarify the succession of rumors. “Everything he says is looked at with a magnifying glass,” say party sources in the region, who endorse the leader's closed support for Alberto Núñez Feijóo. “What the media and bases say is one thing, and what she says is another,” they add..

The regional president used the Executive Committee and the National Board of Directors of the PP in Madrid this Wednesday to discard herself. But he failed to drive away the ghost of the succession of Feijóo, on whom Ayuso and Juanma Moreno closed ranks yesterday. The only possible leadership is that of the Galician, riveted the two barons with the most authority in the party. The bulk of the questions from the journalists to the Madrid president pointed in the same direction, mentioning the words of Esperanza Aguirre, who hinted the day before that the future of the party depends on her, and the chants in favor of Ayuso during the very electoral night present. “It cannot be that on Thursday we were at a rally with President Feijóo, applauding him and giving him our support, and on Tuesday throwing him off a bridge. We are not a party that works like this, we are not podemitas”, Ayuso stressed regarding the statements of the former leader, who demanded a change of leadership in the party.

Sunday's episode in Genoa raised the tension at the worst possible moment and revealed the extent to which the succession debate has broken into the internal cadres of the party, always under the threat of a new rift. The faces said it all. Publicly, it is a taboo, and even Ayuso tried this Wednesday to throw balls out to bury the speculation, but no one escapes that it is the great topic of conversation since election night.

Ayuso's appearance was a kind of denial of what was said in recent days. “Of course it has to be the candidate [Feijóo]. It would be nonsense and not listen to the mandate of the polls,” said the Madrid leader about who should lead the PP in a hypothetical electoral repetition. The internal fight, at least for the moment, is parked. Her environment assures that she receives with some surprise the endless number of pools that arise around her, despite the national profile of the president and the messages launched in recent months, sometimes contradictory with the national leadership itself.. In Genoa, in fact, they do not hide their discomfort and discomfort for some situations experienced that feed this theory.

“Everything the president says is highly scrutinized and interpreted, but she is always very clear and transparent in her interventions.. Today he has made it very clear”, they point out in the PP of Madrid, alluding to the press conference after the board of directors. During the meeting, according to sources consulted, the same message was released. “What he has said before the media is the same thing that has moved us all. It is a real support for Feijóo. Not because of her or because of him, but because of the importance of the moment”, details a member of the party's executive in Madrid, who confirms that the support of the Madrid formation for the leadership is “100%”..

The reality, however, is that a sector of the party sees in Isabel Díaz Ayuso the perfect antidote to defeat Pedro Sánchez. Also to corner and keep Vox at bay, although many times their speeches are intermingled. Aguirre expressed it in public this week, but the truth is that the feeling that she has to be in charge of redirecting the situation is widespread.. “Her results support her, but it is obvious that with such importance everything she says is going to bring tail. For the good and for the bad”, maintains another of the voices consulted.

In Andalusia they believe it

Ayuso's support for Feijóo is also credible in other territories, such as Andalusia. The barony directed by Juanma Moreno is seen as a kind of opposite path to that of Madrid. The message in the PP is clear regarding these two souls: the two add up and are necessary for the party to be successful. But in the new popular bastion there are no doubts about the veracity of the commitment shown by the president of the Community of Madrid. “He knows that the next president of Spain will be Feijóo, as everyone in the party knows,” they point out from the environment of Malaga. In San Telmo, they remember that the president of the Community of Madrid “has helped Feijóo” and will continue to do so, because the PP of Madrid is one of the “pillars” of the project that he leads.

#Andalusia is the community where the vote for the PP has grown the most and the one that contributes the most deputies. And that is great news. @NunezFeijoo is the president preferred by the Spanish and is already working to try to form a government.

You have our support to do it. pic.twitter.com/Lh57Rvfpal

– Juanma Moreno (@JuanMa_Moreno) July 25, 2023

In the Andalusian PP, they do not expect “any movement” from Isabel Díaz Ayuso to coup and seize power in Genoa, according to Fran M. Goofy. “She is intelligent and knows that this is not the time,” says another popular source, who also abounds that the Madrid woman has a kind of pending debt with the president of the PP. He thus refers to the tragic succession of Pablo Casado, who singled out the president for the commissions that her brother charged and cast shadows of suspicions of corruption on her. “Feijóo took a brown from him in his day,” insists this Andalusian popular leader.

This position is compatible with certain doubts about the behavior of the baroness that show in other territories. “If she moves improperly against Feijóo, the same in Madrid cheers her on, but in the rest of Spain they don't like betrayals,” says another popular baron. This leader focuses on the statements of Esperanza Aguirre, who has suggested that the future of the PP goes through Isabel Díaz Ayuso. “She could not be and since it could not be, it has to be whoever she says,” explains this source, who considers that Aguirre's preferences do not have to be in tune with those of the party as a whole..

The current model of primaries existing in the PP is the same that exalted Pablo Casado after the militants overwhelmingly opted for Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría in the first phase of the process. Feijóo had the intention of modifying it, but he has not had time, which is logical if one takes into account that he has been focused on three elections since his arrival in Genoa: the Andalusian elections in June 2022, the municipal and regional elections in May and the general elections this year. sunday july 23. This double round system gives a kind of insurance to the party structures to end up deciding who is the leader. In the event that Feijóo ends up leaving the leadership of the PP if he does not manage to be sworn in as president, the process would be opened.

A veteran leader of the party, who has gone through all the existing positions —with the exception of minister and regional president—, is convinced that the party would not allow Isabel Díaz Ayuso to end up in Genoa, precisely because of her similarities with Esperanza Aguirre and that Madrid model of understanding the PP. This position coincides precisely with the election of Núñez Feijóo as leader after the forced resignation of Casado. And it is an amendment to the entirety of that famous phrase of the Madrid president: “Madrid is Spain within Spain”.

The mistrust between JxCAT and ERC undermined the declaration in the plenary of the Parliament about the good intentions of both Albert Batet, spokesman for Junts, and Pere Aragonès to join forces to jointly negotiate the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. The formation of Carles Puigdemont was outraged this Wednesday because the Republicans had secretly agreed with the Socialists to enter the Barcelona Provincial Council. So the crossed reproaches continue, such as the one Batet dropped against the Catalan president: “In Junts we will not do strange dealings on the sly and against nature like the one that has been done in the Barcelona Provincial Council”.

Fundamental distrust prevails. Batet also dropped a criticism of the “false dialogue” that, in his opinion, the Generalitat was maintaining with Moncloa. As Aragonès warned him, “if we enter into a dynamic of reproaches, we will not succeed”.

But JxCAT and ERC do not have the same objectives, nor do they come from the same position, nor is there a minimally common past discourse. In the campaign, the Republicans took time, but ended up saying that they would stop the extreme right. On the other hand, Junts always maintained that he would not make Pedro Sánchez president, whatever happened.

“We'll do better if we do it together, yeah. And, in the same way, I say: if we start a dynamic that may sound reproachful, surely it will be much more difficult to achieve that common front that you say you want to move forward, ”said Aragonès. It was the last plenary. Parliament goes on vacation this week. And everything will enter a path of waiting for September and fleeing from the media focus.

As La Vanguardia explained, this Monday the general secretary of JxCAT, Jordi Turull, the party's spokesman, Josep Rius, and the spokesman in Parliament, Albert Batet, ate in a restaurant's private room while connecting by videoconference with Carles Puigdemont, what's next in belgium. The message that the fugitive expresident sent them, according to sources familiar with the meeting, was simple: “Hold your position.”. And this is how the three interested parties communicated it to the party executive, who later met that same afternoon: demand amnesty from Pedro Sánchez and a referendum on self-determination.

That is not the position of ERC, which aspires to negotiate from more realistic positions and is afraid of continuing to lose votes if there is a new electoral call, according to Republican sources.. And that's where misgivings are born. But in JxCAT they do not get out of these demands. And that makes it very difficult for the two parties to go in unison..

restlessness in the party

Within JxCAT, there is concern about the situation. The party has spent 2.3 million in the last campaign, largely financed by bonuses among militants. The result has been the worst in history: only seven deputies in Congress. Worse even than the first generals that Jordi Pujol attended with CiU. Many mayors view with concern the drift of training, the loss of institutional power and the scant game that their politics is making. But no criticism is made either in public or in private.. Although in the executive on Monday some members did raise misgivings about such a maximalist approach to such an important negotiation that in practice, as Aragonès said in Parliament, “gives a second chance” to the independence movement after some very bad results on 23- J.

Even for JxCAT they could be worse. In Girona, there is a deputy who is at stake for the external vote and that will be determined tomorrow, Friday. The results have been so scarce that there is only a difference of 350 for the PP to obtain one of the seven seats that Junts now has in Congress.

Bad situation

Every bad situation is likely to get worse, says the saying. If the final count delivers that deputy from Girona to the PP, JxCAT would no longer tie with ERC, but would be left with six deputies compared to seven for the Republicans. And not only that. With this result, it is enough for Puigdemont's men to abstain for Pedro Sánchez to repeat his mandate. On the other hand, if the representative of Girona loses, abstention will not be enough, they would have to vote yes.

ERC already warned that it would vote for an investiture to stop a PP-Vox government. But Junts always said that for them the popular and the PSOE were the same. With this approach, Carles Puigdemont remains a prisoner of his speech and the pact becomes impossible. If abstention is already so expensive, it is hard to imagine what the former president would ask for having to vote yes.

Pact calculators fume. The results of the 23-J elections have left a scenario in which, as is usual in Spain after some general elections, it will be necessary to agree to be able to invest a candidate. The sums to avoid a blockade that leads to an electoral repetition are very tight. As of today, and in the absence of talks between the parties, the most probable equation is an abstention by Junts that makes Pedro Sánchez president, with the yeses of Sumar, ERC, BNG, EH Bildu and PNV.

But all cabals may change in the next few hours. Although several days have passed, we still do not know the definitive data of what was voted on 23-J. The big question is: will the recount of the vote of residents abroad (CERA) change the result we knew on election night? In such a tight situation, a single seat move would completely disrupt the negotiations..

The Casa de Campo fair complex will be the scene of this last count, which will attract all the attention. Feijóo has assured that the acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, had summoned him to have a meeting once the definitive data was available, including the CERA vote. Although from the Moncloa they deny that there is a commitment to start talks, the truth is that it makes sense to wait to find out the situation after the last ball of seats.

With the data left by election night, the territories where the transfer of seats between one block and another are most likely are Madrid, Girona, Tarragona and Malaga. But before explaining what can happen in each of them, we are going to clear up a broader question. Which parties benefit from the CERA vote?

More votes for the left in the diaspora

You only have to look at the last general elections to find a precedent. On November 13, 2019, three days after the elections that were repeated that year, the PP snatched a seat from the PNV in Vizcaya thanks to the vote of the absent residents. The situation complicated the investiture of Sánchez, who was precisely one deputy away from having more yeses than noes to be sworn in as president without having to seek the abstention of EH Bildu or Junts, which the Basque party finally ceded to him.

Although in this case the situation benefited the popular at times, the review of the history shows that in practically all the elections the left has obtained better results among Spaniards who reside abroad than among those who live in the country.

In all the general elections held since the year 2000, with the exception of those of 2004, the Popular Party has obtained less support from compatriots abroad than within the country. And the same has happened with Vox in the last two, where it obtained representation. The only exception in the block on the right was Ciudadanos, who did manage to convince more outside the borders than within.

If we look at the block on the left, the situation is opposite. Between 2000 and 2011, the PSOE always achieved better results abroad. In 2015, the irruption of Podemos broke with this trend, to the point that the purple formation was the most voted among Spaniards residing in other countries, with 31% of the votes over the vote for candidacies. Although this raised its final result from 20.8% to 24.5%, it did not help Podemos and its confluences to manage to scratch a deputy from another party. Also in 2016, the result of the CERA vote implied a change in the data of those who do not live abroad, but, again, this fact did not translate into any change of seats for Podemos.

What does the math say?

As we said before, the eyes this Friday are directed to four constituencies. In Madrid, the PP was left 1,749 votes behind the PSOE. In Girona, the PP is 363 votes away from seizing the seat from Junts. In Tarragona, the PSC could steal a seat from Junts and in Malaga, the PSOE is just over 3,000 votes from the PP. In addition to these, there are other provinces with seats at stake, but where the chances of exchange between blocks are less, although not impossible..

A smaller distance in votes does not mean that there are more possibilities, since the difference takes into account the total votes cast. In other words, a distance of 1,000 votes in Madrid, with a census of more than 350,000 voters, is less than one of 1,000 in Soria, where just over 7,000 residents abroad can vote..

But, in addition, there are more calculations to take into account and that further complicate the options that there are movements. The distance in votes that each party was left to achieve the last seat is a snapshot, but getting around it with CERA “is not so easy”, warns Raquel Villacampa, from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Zaragoza. “As the attacking party adds votes, so does the other party,” he explained by phone. The D'Hondt system means that, as soon as new votes begin to be added, the distribution is altered and it is not enough to overcome the difference that resulted on election night.

The expert provides several examples, for places where there may be change, on her Twitter account. This is how he summarizes a hypothetical case in Madrid: “If the PSOE gets zero CERA votes, the PP needs at least 1,749 votes. But if the PSOE gets 1,000 CERA votes, the PP would need 3,202 to steal that seat.”. “It is more complicated, but the numbers are what they are”, ditch.

And now, a real case. Let's recover the precedent of 2019 with the disputed seat of Vizcaya. The electoral night count ended with a distance of 163 votes in favor of the Basque nationalists. The following table simulates how this province distributes its seats. According to the D'Hondt system, the votes received by each party are divided as many times as deputies are distributed by the constituency. In this case, eight. The eight maximum values of the entire table are those that define which training is benefited. In blue, the eight maximum figures; in red, that of the applicant.

The figures, however, are provisional.. First, the corresponding electoral boards review all the documentation delivered by all the polling stations in their area.. Here the possible errors occurred in the communication of the data are amended. A few days later, the votes sent by the Spaniards abroad are opened.

The differences between both tables take into account both the addition of the CERA vote (the PP received 407 from abroad, compared to the 731 of the PNV) and the corrections of the Electoral Board. Despite the fact that the PNV obtained more votes, the final result was favorable to the Popular Party, which only needed 347 for the extra ballots for the 'jeltzales'. So each new vote influences the final result.

What happened in the most sensitive provinces

The Community in Madrid, where the PP has some possibility of adding a new seat at the expense of the PSOE, has a good handful of voters from abroad. In the previous general ones, those of November 10, 2019, there were more than 30,000. Then, the Socialists were the first force in this segment of voters, with close to 26% of the votes and an advantage of 1,284 ballots over the PP. But in five of the eight previous elections, the popular ones won in this constituency. And here the background is slightly more favorable to the right than in the country as a whole.

Meanwhile, in Girona and Tarragona the trend of the last calls has been more favorable for Esquerra —and Junts, in the case of the first—. Nearly 2,000 votes from these Catalan provinces were cast from abroad in 2019.

For its part, in Malaga, it seems difficult for the PSOE to snatch the last seat from the PP, which lacked 3,047 votes for the surprise. In the last general elections, less than 4,000 voted from abroad and voters from abroad preferred left-wing parties, following the national trend.

The icing on the uncertainty cake

As if the lack of certainties described were not enough, there is one more element that complicates the predictions about what real options each party has in this late battle for the last seat: participation.

In 2011, the PP, PSOE, PNV and CiU agreed on a change in the electoral law to include the system of the requested vote of residents abroad.. The reason: some complaints about irregularities in the voting of emigrants. Since then, those who resided abroad had to go through an extra procedure to beg for their right to vote. In the elections held that same year, it was possible to verify how CERA participation fell from close to 30% to just over 6%.. The levels have always remained below 7%.

At the end of 2022, this system was terminated to facilitate participation in the elections for Spanish emigrants. The factor of participation, unpredictable in these first elections without a requested vote after more than 10 years, will also be decisive in this last contest to achieve one more seat in the Congress of Deputies.