Political Maneuvering and Strategic Alliances in Spanish Politics

Alberto Núñez Feijóo has marked a path. But Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz will follow the one they had already traced, without deviating excessively from the course.

The leader of the PP has just over a month to try to gather support for his inauguration, between September 26 and 27, and the acting president and second vice president will take advantage of every minute before the advance countdown is activated election to do the same.

This Wednesday, shortly after Francina Armengol revealed that she will give the popular time to try to tie up support that today the left sees as impossible, Sumar revealed that she will hand over two deputies to ERC so that they can form their own group.

The PSOE, reluctant to reveal its steps, will do the same with its parliamentarians so that Junts sees this wish fulfilled. It is a courtesy gesture with several precedents, affirmed socialist sources, and confirmed it from the Government without giving many more clues.

A declaration of intent that comes to shield his strategy to form a majority that allows the investiture of Sánchez, which lands one of the demands formulated in the negotiations for the constitution of the Table, on August 17, and which seeks to lay the foundations for generate “confidence”, in the words of a member of the acting Executive.

Armengol’s decision to take into account the wishes of Feijóo, who initially wanted a plenary session as soon as possible and later chose to buy time to try to negotiate, surprised some sectors of the coalition parties.

The most common reading is that they have an extra month before the hands of the clock start to slip, that every minute counts to find the votes they need, which will be very difficult to tie up.

Feijóo has 172 endorsements, but in the PSOE and in Sumar they take it for granted that they can tie the 178 supports that would not only prevent the investiture of the PP leader, but would guarantee that of Sánchez, in the first round.

“Discretion” is the watchword between PSOE, Sumar and the pro-independence formations, but the talks continue. In parallel, Díaz’s party is already openly calling for an amnesty law for those prosecuted and convicted for their role in the Catalan process, a demand by Junts that can have a significant political cost, especially for the Socialists.

In the PSOE, they are more cautious and avoid the word amnesty, but Sánchez has gone from boasting that the independentistas have not achieved this claim, a little over a month ago, to rejecting the socialist mantra that the Constitution would not allow it. Sumar explores this path, and the PSOE does not reject it.

The fit, they explain from the socialist ranks, would be very delicate: beyond its legal dimension, which would have to be studied to the millimeter, it will be necessary to pamper aspects that even go through the name of the future norm, to try to reduce the damage that approval can cause them this amnesty.

On this path, however, in the PSOE and in Sumar they ridicule the actions of a PP that, after the elections, gave Junts legitimacy as an interlocutor, then took it away and for years has been very critical of this party, of Carles Puigdemont and with the group of pro-independence forces. This Wednesday, he recognized the “tradition and legality” of the party of the “fugitive from Justice”.

Seeing how Feijóo plans to talk with ERC, after years of political war between the two, seems almost poetic justice. And they believe, especially in Sumar, that it does not have any margin to scratch support.

That Borja Sémper, spokesman for the PP, appealed again to the socialist deputies, led the spokesman for the PSOE in Congress, Patxi López, to ask him to “stop fooling around”. While the Popular Party walks towards parliamentary failure, they insist, they move towards a plausible investiture.

However, the gesture towards Junts and ERC is not only symbolic. Having your own group guarantees access to an enormous amount of resources, starting with the grant of 30,000 euros per month per group and going through the right to recover the amount invested in electoral shipments on 23-J, and that only economically.

Having their own group guarantees visibility, more time for interventions and allows them to maintain a status that, without this agreement, neither group would have been able to revalidate.

This decision will go ahead by the majority of PSOE and Sumar at the Table (5/4) next Monday, but there are many other open fronts, such as the one that concerns the use of co-official languages in the Lower House, in which they are also working. Feijóo’s full investiture does not frustrate this roadmap.