Pedro Sánchez does not deserve to get the investiture in the first round of the vote in the Spanish Congress this Tuesday. The candidate for prime minister does not deserve it because of his arrogance. He does not deserve it because of his inability to dialogue. He does not deserve it because of the almost immoral lack of absolute majority and for blaming others for not wanting to vote for him gratuitously, in exchange for nothing. He does not deserve it due to his contempt for Unidas Podemos. We can and for its leader Pablo Iglesias, the most brilliant speaker, by far, in the gallery of the Lower House this Monday. He does not deserve it for the way he has tackled the Catalan issue, not for the independence or a new referendum, but for his disregard for more than two million citizens who support different political parties. And he does not deserve it because the day has had a lot of theater and deception for the people, since Sanchez does not want anything of what he says: neither a coalition government, nor dialogue, nor agreements with the leftist groups. He wants to go, simply, to elections on the 10th November.
This Monday, the Spanish Congress has lived an unusual parliamentary session: a candidate for PM who has devoted the whole day to directly or indirectly hurt his potential allies for the investiture. Making it clear that only circumstances have led him to the investiture session and that the distance with Podemos, the party with which he is negotiating the coalition government, is abysmal. Only Pablo Iglesias' dialectical containment until his last intervention has prevented an escalation in their disagreement during their vibrant dialectic duel. It was, at the end, that Iglesias was implacable with Sánchez who appeared crestfallen while taking the attack of Podemos' leader, Iglesias directly accusing him of making decorative offers to the coalition government and spelling out one by one each and every one of Sanchez's refusals to the proposals he had made. He knocked out the socialist leader, something that will maybe be good since Sánchez is in electoral pilot mode. And only thus can be understood that, irritated, Sanchez challenged left wing Podemos to join right and ultra right parties PP, Citizens and Vox to make up an alternative government.
The last words of Iglesias were the most powerful and those that openly question whether PSOE and Podemos can be allies nowadays. He accused the PSOE of stepping on them, censured his inability to reach agreements and launched a missile to Sanchez: "I'm afraid that if you are not prime minister now, you shall never be." All this with Podemos' seats exulting with their leader and with PSOE's deputies terribly angry with the final attack. Much work will have to be done by PSOE and Podemos' teams to undo the what has been spoiled in the Congress this Monday and, most importantly, if there was to be an agreement on Thursday, it will have been reached in such a reluctant way by the sponsors, and with so many discrepancies on the table, that it does not venture anything good for the future.
On the way to this Monday, pro-independence parties have lost some of the incentives they may have had to support the investiture. If Iglesias and Podemos do not support Sánchez, Catalan parties' votes are not much use and, in addition, the arrogance of PSOE's candidate turns any supports that might be provided into a trance. And it's just that even if politics are very intrincated at times, in the end, you need to always be able to explain them. And Sánchez has made it, unnecessarily, really difficult for them.