Lend 16 deputies or turn a blind eye: Ferraz's options to grant his own group to ERC and Junts

The Regulations of the Congress establish two requirements for the parties so that they can have their own group: to have at least 15 seats or, failing that, a minimum of five and 15% of the votes in all constituencies in which they have presented candidacies. or 5% of those issued in the whole of Spain. Neither ERC nor Junts, with seven representatives each, meet any of these conditions, but they could still get an exception made with them.

According to parliamentary sources, the Board of the Chamber “has the power to forgive them the tenths that they lack” or “it can even allow the loan of deputies from other groups”. For this they would need the majority of this body to be favorable to their interests, an option that the left bloc is willing to favor in exchange for the support of the independentistas so that they can win five of the nine seats.

In the last general elections ERC remained below the barrier of 15% of the votes in Barcelona (12.3%) and in Girona (14.7%). In the case of Junts, it did not reach that barrier either in the Catalan capital (9.6%) or in the Tarragona constituency (11%). Therefore, the two options could be that they turn a blind eye to the percentage of votes they lack or that they receive a loan of eight deputies each.

Having your own group implies political and economic advantages, with a fixed allowance of 30,346.72 euros per month and a variable subsidy at the rate of 1,746.16 euros per month for each member. Whoever constitutes it is guaranteed their presence in all the commissions, in the Permanent Deputation, an autonomous voice in the Board of Spokespersons and the ability to intervene in the debates on an equal footing, while in the Mixed Group intervention times and seats must be distributed in The commissions.

At the same time that PSOE and Sumar try to use the parliamentary concessions route to complete the majority that they lack to reissue their coalition, in the PP they do not give up in their attempt to appear before the King with 172 guaranteed supports to try to line up Alberto Núñez Feijóo towards La Moncloa. In addition to the 137 deputies from their party, they already have the unconditional support of the 33 from Vox, which has renounced demanding positions in the Council of Ministers in exchange for their votes, with that of UPN and they hope to add to these accounts the only representative of the Canarian Coalition, with whom they have been summoned to speak in the coming days.

Even so, they would still lack another four seats for an absolute majority. Translated into parliamentary arithmetic, the only possibility of investing their candidate would be if they received more yeses than noes in the second round, for which they would need an abstention from another group that in theory would only have options to try to find in the PNV -which already He has rejected any “equation” in which Santiago Abascal's party participates – or in Junts per Catalunya (JxCat).

The general coordinator of the PP, Elías Bendodo, defended yesterday in RNE that his party is “transversal”, with “the ability to agree to the right and left” and that now it only closes the door to non-compliance with “constitutional limits”.. Asked if with this premise he would sit down to talk with Carles Puigdemont's party, the number three from Genoa responded literally: “They themselves were the ones who were outside the Constitution, but part of the result of the Round Table will also depend on them of Congress and the investiture. So it will depend on your attitude.. We, in principle, have not established such contact. But I want to tell you that we have to have the ability to talk to everyone, to everyone. Now, another thing is after reaching agreements with everyone. Not that. It is one thing to talk to everyone and another thing to swallow everything. And there the PP is not willing ».

In Feijóo's team they later qualified that, despite what could be inferred from this statement, they rule out speaking with JxCat, whose leader is on the run from Justice, because he is currently “outside the constitutional limits.”