Sánchez negotiates with his partners a long-range agreement to ensure four years

Pedro Sánchez wants to achieve an investiture through a legislative agreement. That is the approach that the acting president of the Government and socialist candidate is putting on the table in the meetings he has already held with his partners to continue as a tenant of the Moncloa.. This is the balance that can be made after the meeting of the PSOE leader with Yolanda Díaz, Néstor Rego and Aitor Esteban, the representatives of Sumar, BNG and PNV. With the first, he intends to put together a new coalition and the other two are part of the usual partners of the last term.. And the socialists intend to keep it that way for the next four years, banishing any suspicion of a short term..

The PSOE spokesperson in Congress, Patxi López, explained after the meetings with Galician and Basque nationalists that the conversations are aimed at this long-term agreement. “An investiture is not enough,” said the socialist leader. And that is something that they share, for example, in the PNV, since the Jeltzale spokesperson spoke in the same terms this Tuesday after the meeting he had with Sánchez, in which María Jesús Montero was present.. The presence of the Minister of Finance is not trivial, since this desire for a long-term agreement requires at least three budget agreements in a legislature, as has happened in the one that has just ended..

The idea that the PSOE handles is that the groups' proposals are not immediately applicable, but rather require the time that a legislature gives. And, furthermore, they are measures that will surely have a budgetary reflection. “This way it is easier to reach an agreement for four years,” explain socialist sources. What no one within the PSOE dares to venture is the date on which the talks will come to fruition and will give way to the setting of a date for Sánchez's investiture debate.. What is almost certain is that it will be after the swearing-in of the Constitution by the Princess of Asturias, scheduled for next October 31, Leonor de Borbón's 18th birthday..

In these first meetings, Sánchez is establishing “the framework” and attending to the initial positions of the partners of his potential investiture. It will be after this round when the groups and the PSOE get to work, with concrete proposals. In any case, the reactions of López and the various spokespersons who have met with the president in Congress are positive.. It happened to Yolanda Díaz last Wednesday, although both socialists and leftists took the entire month of October to close a programmatic agreement before addressing the distribution of ministerial portfolios and beginning to bring names to the fore.. And Rego and Esteban have spoken in the same sense..

What comes now will be much more discreet, admit both the partners and the PSOE. The modus operandi will be similar to that followed by the socialists with the negotiation of the Congressional Board that ended with the election of Francina Armengol as president of the Lower House. But first the president must meet with UPN, Canarian Coalition and ERC, this Wednesday; and Junts per Catalunya and EH Bildu, this Friday. What is foreseeable is that the conversation with the Navarrese foralistas will have a similar tone to the one that occurred on Monday with Alberto Núñez Feijóo. To the popular, Sánchez did not ask for support, but rather “respect” for the process. The pivotal role that the Canarian nationalists give themselves anticipates a more proactive attitude from the socialists regarding this “Canarian agenda” that they demand from the islands..

Logic says that with ERC and EH Bildu the mood will be more similar to that of the meetings with PNV and BNG, but in the PSOE they are aware that the staging of the agreements, when they arrive, will be relevant. “No one wants to sign the last one,” acknowledges a Ferraz source. The mystery is, as it has been happening almost since July 24, in Junts per Catalunya. Those of Carles Puigdemont have made it clear that they will vote for or against, that there will be no abstention. The challenge for the socialists is to add them to what Pablo Iglesias called “the bloc of state governance”, something that the neo-convergents denied, until now..