It's one of the things about the new technologies: you can be on holiday in Lanzarote and post a video on social media that ends up being as effective as a press conference. If on Saturday it was Carles Puigdemont who used his Twitter account to make it clear that he will not accept political blackmail when deciding the Together for Catalonia (Junts) vote in the Congress of Deputies, this Monday it was Pedro Sánchez who used the same network to send a direct message to the president in exile: "It's time now to translate the social majority into a parliamentary majority in the Congress of Deputies and that is what we are going to do. Work to get an investiture."
Well, if this really is the case, Pedro Sánchez will find the phone lines open, since president Puigdemont hopes that the prime minister of the Spanish government will translate his words into action. Because at stake is not only his investiture but the make-up of the Bureau of the Spanish Congress, including the position of speaker of the lower house. Although the Socialists (PSOE) have already told the two Catalan pro-independence groups, Junts and ERC, that they are willing to facilitate that they have a parliamentary group, even though they would ordinarily not be entitled to one because they do not meet the conditions set out in the chamber's regulations, this does not definitively resolve the issue of the speaker.
This condition would be gladly accepted by the People's Party (PP) if it secured the speaker's position of the chamber for them. The subject of the parliamentary group is not pointless, as it would above all help Junts to get out of the economic difficulties it currently suffers. We are talking about a significant amount - 1.3 million euros - that the state only pays to a political party if it has a parliamentary group. An abstention from Junts would leave the PP closer to the speakership of Congress and this is a key element when it comes to deciding the schedule for the investiture and much more if the legislature ends up having a life, which right now is not certain.
It could also happen, and this would indeed be a Copernican shift with respect to the different legislatures that there have been since 1977, that the position of speaker of Congress went to a deputy who was neither from the PP nor the PSOE. It would be a way for a different photo to be represented. Junts could end up endorsing this formula, which would give it relevance compared to the rest of the peripheral parties and that would probably leave the Basque Nationalists, the PNV, as the political group with the most options to occupy the third-highest institutional position in the state. It is, to be sure, not a simple move to bring off, but it is the one that would best respond to the current situation, in which neither the PSOE nor the PP have definitive majorities around them.
Or, as has been pointed out by one person who is perfectly familiar with the ins and outs of everyday politics, it would be the best way for no one to take anything for granted over the investiture. Over this decision, unlike that of the investiture, the clock is indeed counting down, since Congress is to be constituted on Thursday, August 17th, a day of mourning in Catalonia, because it will be six years since the jihadist attacks on the Rambla in Barcelona and the coastal town of Cambrils.