2023-07-24 06:15:49
The leader of the PP, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, last night on the balcony of Genoa celebrating the electoral victory. (Archyde.com/Juan Medina)
The night of July 23 left two wins and two losses. Alberto Nuñez Feijóo won the general elections but has surely lost the Government. Pedro Sánchez lost the elections but has a good chance of reissuing a coalition government. A bitter victory for Feijóo and a chance for Sánchez, whom many considered dead. Now everything is in the hands of the nationalists. The independentistas have the key to governance in Spain. Above all, Junts, the Catalan independence party of Carles Puigdemont (in Belgium so as not to be arrested in Spain), which initially threatened to blockade. The scenario of an electoral repetition is not ruled out.
“We are risking the model of the country we want,” Alberto Nuñez Feijóo said on Sunday morning after casting his vote at the polls. Expectations in Genoa were high – they came to predict 168 deputies – although it is true that as the campaign progressed they moderated. But no one expected this result. The PP has won 47 seats compared to 2019, but the feeling last night was bittersweet in the popular headquarters. Funeral, for some. Because they were satisfied with 150 seats. And in the end they stayed at 136. Everyone was aware that they would have to agree with Vox to reach La Moncloa, but the bump from the extreme right has been so notorious – it goes from 52 to 33 deputies – that the numbers do not give. The 169 that add up to both are far from the absolute majority of 176.
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So now Feijóo is not only playing “the country model” he wanted, now he is also playing the consolidation of his leadership within the PP. Ayuso, whose face was a poem, was cheered by the militants while Feijóo spoke from the famous balcony of Genoa. This Monday there is a National Board of Directors and the Galician politician will stress to his leadership and to the barons that, since he has won the elections, he will try to form a government. He knows, however, that the numbers do not reach him. For the investiture, 176 votes are needed. He is only 169. He can count on the deputy that the Navarrese conservatives of UPN have achieved (170) and hardly on that of the Canary Islands Coalition, which already refused to support an Executive in which the extreme right is in the campaign.
Feijóo cannot count on the Socialists in a hypothetical abstention. In the debate for two with Pedro Sánchez held at Atresmedia, the only one in which the two have seen each other’s faces, the popular leader tried to get Sánchez to commit to allowing the list with the most votes to govern. He didn’t get it. The Socialists criticize the cynicism of the popular leader who, for example, has done the opposite in communities such as the Canary Islands and Extremadura, where the PP has not allowed the list with the most votes to govern. On that side, the PP has nothing to scratch.
The President of the Government and leader of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, greets the militants and socialist sympathizers who have come to the PSOE headquarters (EFE / Rodrigo Jiménez)
Because these elections were not about parties, they were about blocks. PP and Vox on the one hand to repeal ‘sanchismo’, and the rest on the other so that the ultra-right does not “make Spain go back 40 years in a dark tunnel”. It has also been a dirty campaign, where both candidates have spread lies and half-truths, where they have been criticized since the election date – in the middle of vacations – and the validity of voting by mail has been questioned. Without forgetting the ‘Txapote vote for you’, which last night was cheered by supporters who gathered in Genoa. A proclamation that has mobilized the progressive voter. It has also been a campaign where Feijóo has gone from more to less. His refusal not to participate in the four-way debate, something that many considered a mistake, and the striking reactivation of the controversy over his old friendship with the drug trafficker and smuggler Marcial Dorado, have not helped either.
The result of the general elections held yesterday could block the governance of the country, since the PP and PSOE candidates do not have enough seats to be clearly invested as presidents of the government. The PP candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has won the general elections but by the minimum, he does not add up to Vox and will not be able to govern. Pedro Sánchez, for his part, endures but his investiture will depend on Carles Puigdemont’s party to continue in Moncloa, given the setback that ERC has suffered in these elections, which has lost 6 seats. (Source: Courtesy Images)
Feijóo has already asked that Sánchez and the rest of the forces not block his investiture. But it is that the accounts do not come out. PSOE and Sumar gather 153 supports. In 2019 PNV -Basque nationalists- and BNG voted in favor of Sánchez. With the results obtained this Sunday there are another six votes. EH Bildu has obtained six seats and Arnaldo Otegi already indicated last night that they will never allow a government of PP and Vox. And then there is Esquerra, who, although he also suffered a bad result yesterday, dropping from 13 to 7 deputies, could give his votes to a hypothetical investiture of Sánchez, who would then have 172 votes. “Here the dilemma is Catalonia or Vox,” said Gabriel Rufián.
Sánchez would lack four votes. He would serve the seven from Junts, which they assure “that they do not owe anything to anyone.” An absolute majority is required in the first investiture vote in Congress. If it is not reached, there is a new vote 48 hours later in which a simple majority is sufficient, that is, more ‘yes’ than ‘no’. Here abstentions will be essential. In other words, it would be enough with the abstention of Junts, who defends the secessionist referendum and wants Carles Puigdemont to be able to return to Catalonia. A price perhaps too high for Sánchez.
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The candidate for the presidency of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, during her appearance at the SUMAR headquarters in Madrid after knowing the results of the elections (EFE / Kiko Huesca)
So the blockade is a reality. The Cortes will be constituted on August 17. That day, the presidents of both Chambers and the rest of the members of the Board (four vice-presidents and four secretaries) will be elected. Afterwards, the king meets with each political representative, beginning with the one that has obtained the least representation in Congress and ending with the one with the most. After this round of consultations, the Head of State will be the one who proposes the name of the candidate for Prime Minister. Feijóo wants to be, but initially he does not have the support. It may then be the opportunity for Sánchez, who continues to write chapters of his resistance manual.
“They gave us up for dead, but what comes now is going to be difficult to manage,” they point out from the PSOE. And it is that the parliamentary arithmetic that has come out of the polls this Sunday is complex. Pedro Sánchez has endured the type, winning two deputies and 700,000 votes. The PP has won the elections to the PSOE by just over 300,000 ballots. An intense summer of negotiations lies ahead. Another bitter victory has been that of Yolanda Díaz. Sumar has not surpassed Vox and breaks in as the fourth political force in the country. It may be a relevant formation, but the number of seats it has obtained (31) is less than the one that Unidas Podemos and its partners obtained four years ago (38). We will now have to take stock and reflect, and see if the veto of Irene Montero and the bad relationship with a sector of Podemos have taken their toll. It will also be time to see if Yolanda Díaz manages to consolidate a project with so many sensibilities, made up of an amalgamation of fifteen formations.
In the Basque Country and Catalonia the results have also been relevant. Internally, Bildu -Basque independentists, heirs of the extinct terrorist group ETA- wrests hegemony from the PNV (the Basque elections are next year). And in Catalonia, the pro-independence forces –although they are now key in Madrid– have lost nine deputies (the CUP disappears from Congress). This result reveals that Sánchez’s policy, which has opted for pardons for the leaders of the process and the creation of a dialogue table, has been rewarded by the Catalans. The foreign vote remains to be counted, the results of which will be made public at the end of the week. Some deputy can still vary. The Spanish political landscape is completely open and the investiture is up in the air.
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