Pedro Sánchez, sworn in as president with Puigdemont's "daily" threat and with the streets against the amnesty

179 votes in favor, 171 against and no abstentions. Pedro Sánchez has been invested as president of the Government with the support of the absolute majority of the deputies and three more. The seats of PSOE, Sumar, Junts, ERC, PNV, Bildu, BNG and Canary Coalition have once again opened the doors of La Moncloa with four years ahead that already seem difficult, subject to the demands of all of them and especially of the Catalan independence movement that just yesterday, wielding its essential votes, already warned him against the temptation to play with luck.

Just today, Junts spokesperson Miriam Nogueras once again stressed that the negotiation with the PSOE will have to be “daily” and that “with each agreement that is fulfilled, Catalonia will have to be closer to independence”. From Brussels, Carles Puigdemont supported his spokesperson in Congress and assured that he does it “very well.”

Sánchez, who will take office in Zarzuela this Friday at 10:00 a.m., now faces the task of forming a new Executive that is presumed shorter than the one he has had to date, more political and more trained to deploy a story built on two pillars: the radical confrontation with the opposition, which he hopes to surround with a cordon sanitaire, and the negotiation, for the sake of “reunion” and “coexistence”, with the secessionists.

The legislature, baptized thanks to the granting of an amnesty to those convicted and prosecuted for the Catalan sovereignty process, will be supervised by minorities that do not gather more than 6% of the votes, but who have managed to prevail by taking advantage of the socialist leader's need to count on their seats to remain in power. And it already has an atmosphere against it in the street, with massive demonstrations against the amnesty like those that occurred throughout Spain last Sunday and that will be repeated this Saturday in the center of Madrid.

The new president of the Government, faithful to the theory that advocates “making a virtue of necessity”, has accepted all the conditions and demands posed by the independence movement and nationalism. The most onerous politically, economically and socially are those put on the table by Carles Puigdemont, the fugitive whom Sánchez one day promised to bring back to Spain in very different conditions than those he offers now with the complete erasure, without passing by the courts, of their alleged crimes.

The socialist leader, enthusiastically applauded by his deputies, a good part of whom, like him, just a few weeks ago denied the possibility of granting an amnesty and today accept it with fervor, has heard from all his new partners the warning that you do not have a “blank check” in your hand.

Also, as a result of the frontist speech that he dedicated to the first party in the Chamber, the PP, he already knows that Feijóo will not give him, if he needs it, opportunities for an agreement, because Sánchez, in these two days, has committed most of his interventions , regardless of who their interlocutor was, to make implacable opposition to the popular ones, to attack the governments they presided over and to attack the current regional executives that they lead.

In the interventions of the now new president, words such as “dialogue”, “reunion”, “coexistence”, “pluralism”, “progressivism”, “advance” have abounded to refer to the future that he is beginning to lead with his new partners.. And regarding the past with him at the head of the country, he has spoken of “indisputable achievements” and only “involuntary errors.”. All evils, including the secessionist attempt in 2017, have been attributed to the PP, whom it has accused of sowing “hatred” and “discord” and whom it has insistently lumped into the “ultra-right” bag.

What Sánchez did not spend a minute on was explaining his abrupt “change of opinion” regarding the amnesty that he previously considered incompatible with the Constitution and now holds up as the essential step for reconciliation and resolution of the Catalan “political conflict.”. Nor did he name on a single occasion Carles Puigdemont or Oriol Junqueras, both leaders of the parties with which he has signed an alliance to be able to return to the head of the Government.

Sánchez thus undertakes a new mandate chained to independentists and nationalists. A mandate on a tightrope that has to overcome two imminent stress tests: the approval of the amnesty law against all the appeals of unconstitutionality that are presented against it and the birth of State Budgets that accommodate the economic requests of all its allies and also foresee a return to the fiscal rules that are already being drawn up in the European Union. A mandate, finally, in which he will face the Senate, where his rival, Feijóo, enjoys an absolute majority; to 13 of the 17 autonomous communities governed by the popular ones and to a large part of the street that protests against their pacts.

In his investiture debate, the new President of the Government has blown up all the bridges with the already leader of the opposition, capable of easily amassing 172 votes against him, which forces him to obtain the renewal of the absolute majority that today has supported him. In the new arithmetic that will dominate the Congress of Deputies, the relevance of the Catalan independence movement will be evident because it will be enough for Junts or ERC to turn their backs on it for their Government to stagger and even fall.

To achieve his investiture, the socialist has signed extensive pacts with his new partners that, beyond the amnesty, contemplate a multitude of transfers of powers, financial compensation and negotiation tables on identity claims that even include addressing the debate on the right to self-determination.. Everyone will put a magnifying glass on his compliance because everyone has also warned over the course of these two days that they do not trust his word.