Pedro Sánchez has ordered his team to pass the ball after 23-J. Yield the initiative to Alberto Núñez Feijóo so that he can portray himself isolated with Vox. Allow time to run during the month of August, encapsulating themselves without picking up the phones, so that the rest of the formations “analyze and rest the results”. That each one gauge which side they want to be on, with the dilemma of positioning themselves with “involution” or “advance”, summarized in Ferraz. An attempt to return the pressure on the nationalist and pro-independence bloc, thus hoping to lower the price of the investiture. Mainly, the party of Carles Puigdemont (JxCAT), whose abstention will be essential to continue leading Moncloa. At the executive meeting held this Monday, Sánchez denied the scenario of a blockade and was “sure” that “this democracy will find the formula for governability”. He did not give any more clues, but it is assumed that the numbers to be repeated, if he got ahead with a high price, would draw a more unstable legislature than the current one..

If a coalition government is formed between the PSOE and Sumar, with the support of the investiture of the entire nationalist and independence bloc, Sánchez would have no room for variable geometry or for carrying out budgets or organic laws without the help of all of them, including Junts. Or what is the same, the times of the legislature and the red button to detonate it would be in the hands of any of these partners. A block, moreover, not at all homogeneous, with crossed interests and in electoral competition with each other.

On the one hand, the PNV with EH Bildu, who will also face regional elections next year. The hegemony of the PNV is at stake, touched after these generals by the surprise in seats of the party of Arnaldo Otegi. The electoral context usually hinders the relationship of the partners with the Government, marking greater distances or raising the clash between them. On the other hand, the competition between ERC and JxCAT, with the former in sharp decline after 28-M and this 23-J and without finishing making profitable their strategy of possibility against the rupturist of Puigdemont's.

In Sumar, the internal cohesion of its parliamentary group is not guaranteed either, with the five Podemos deputies marking their own line, from more maximalist positions and claiming their autonomy. This same Monday, the party leader and deputy elected by Sumar, Ione Belarra, blamed Yolanda Díaz for losing 700,000 votes for “making Podemos and feminism invisible.”. Through a recorded video broadcast on social networks, he criticized a strategy that “has not worked” and defended that Spain “has gained time, but it is not enough”..

The former secretary general, Pablo Iglesias, warned for his part that the five deputies of Podemos will answer to his leadership. Five deputies who could distance themselves from Sumar's voting discipline, adding more uncertainty to governability. Iglesias himself already advanced during an interview in RAC1 that the purple representatives would be “essential for there to be a progressive coalition government and, probably, they are also very important with forces that represent the plurinationality of the State”.

The governability of a hypothetical coalition Executive between PSOE and Sumar, tied to the independence and nationalist bloc in Congress, would also be conditioned by the investiture agreements that are sealed and their subsequent materialization. These formations have been raising the price of their support, starting with ERC. Unlike in 2019, for Sánchez the abstention of the Republicans is not enough, but rather he needs their vote in favor. The conditions set for this by the Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, go through ending the fiscal deficit that Catalonia is dragging, the transfer of Cercanías and advancing towards self-determination.

The price that JxCAT has put on the table this Monday for its essential abstention goes through the maxim of “amnesty” and “self-determination”. Without opening the door to these demands, which the PSOE always rejected by considering them outside the Constitution, the General Secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, assumed that “abstention” from his formation in an eventual investiture by Sánchez “is not a scenario”.. Even if the formation finally fit its demands into a dialogue table, like the last ERC legislature, it would always have in its power to leave the Executive in a minority, preventing governability, if its expectations were not fulfilled.

The challenge to guarantee stability in a legislature with these dependencies is more similar to that faced by the first Sánchez government that emerged from the motion of no confidence than to the current coalition. Added to the foreseeable tensions is the fact that the PP will have an absolute majority in the Upper House. The popular ones will be able to return the laws to Congress, such as budgets, lengthening the processing process.

If from Sumar they have chosen to speed up the times, with the claim to the PSOE to open a negotiation to form a coalition government, as well as exploring a dialogue with JxCAT through the leader of the communes Jaume Asens, Ferraz's strategy goes through the opposite. Postpone any type of contact, stay out of the noise of the days immediately after the elections and let time draw a better composition of the place. One of its assets is that the pro-independence formations understand the message of the vote given to the PSOE. That is, that to recover it in some regional elections they could not be placed in blocking positions.

In reference to the results in Catalonia, the party leadership calls attention to the fact that both JxCAT and ERC must reflect, because “a constitutionalist party [the PSC] adds more than all the independence movement”. Another trick for the Socialists would have to do with guaranteeing that both Republicans and post-convergents obtain their own group in Congress if the Socialists revalidate themselves as President and maintain the progressive majority in this body.. A pact that would open the way to negotiations for the investiture. None of these forces meets the requirement set out in the regulation of having more than 15% of the votes in the constituencies in which they appear, but the final decision rests with the Congress Table.

Former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who throughout the campaign coordinated his messages and appearances with Ferraz, paved the way this Monday by defending the dialogue with JxCAT in an interview on La Sexta. Always with the red line of not agreeing to hold a referendum, he even associated the integration of JxCAT into governance as an “opportunity” to integrate all sectors of the independence movement in a framework of dialogue and coexistence that avoids turning back to a confrontation scenario. The story begins to be filed to rehearse an investiture as a prelude to a hectic legislature, while the negotiation times are delayed so that a rejection of these formations to Feijóo is staged beforehand.