The speaker of Spain's Congress of Deputies, Francina Armengol, has announced the parliamentary session for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez for this Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th November. As she explained this Monday in an appearance at the Congress, the first day of the session will be used to hear the speech of the Socialist (PSOE) candidate for re-election as prime minister, from 12 noon, while the subsequent debate with all parliamentary groups, and the first vote, which must be passed by an absolute majority to be successful, will take place the following day, Thursday. If a second round is needed, the vote will take place on Saturday, November 18th. The calculations made in the speaker's office at Congress are that Sánchez will be returned as PM this Thursday at around noon, taking as a reference the vote that took place during the failed investiture attempt by People's Party (PP) leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo in September.
With the support of the Catalan pro-independence parties committed following the agreements with ERC and Junts, it is envisaged that Sánchez will be invested as PM this Thursday, given that last Friday he concluded the rest of the support agreements. In the first place, the PSOE pocketed the 'yes' of the five Basque Nationalist deputies of the PNV and the single vote of the Canarian Coalition representative. In total, there are 179 votes in favour of his investiture, three more than the absolute majority. On the 'no' side, there will be the 137 of the PP, 33 from far-right Vox and the single vote of the conservative Union del Pueblo Navarro, summing to a total of 171 MPs.
Pedro Sánchez now has few doubts about seeking the confidence of Congress after intense negotiations with the Catalan pro-independence parties. He reached the first objective by securing the seven votes of the Republican Left (ERC), with whom he agreed to create a joint venture public company, in which the Catalan and Spanish governments will both take part, to manage the transfer of the Rodalies commuter rail service. As well, ERC and the PSOE agreed on the deployment of the amnesty law and the forgiveness of part of Catalonia's debt with Spain's autonomous community funding body.
However, the toughest nut to crack was that of Together for Catalonia (Junts), whose seven votes it assured last week after intense negotiations in Brussels between the PSOE organizational secretary, Santos Cerdán, and the Catalan president in exile, Carles Puigdemont. With Junts, the Socialists reached detailed agreement on the amnesty, as well as a mechanism to verify and monitor the pacts reached, and the acceptance that Junts will ask for a self-determination referendum as well as claiming the cession back to the Generalitat of 100% of the taxes collected in Catalonia. For its part, in the text which both parties signed, the PSOE stated that it did not accept the validity of the October 1st referendum and claimed the Statute of Autonomy of 2006 as a consensus route to resolve any conflict between Catalonia and Spain.
Armengol: "I have decided to call this investiture debate for this Wednesday and Thursday, which will begin with the address from the candidate Pedro Sánchez"
Amnesty bill registered by PSOE alone
One of the puzzles that remained to be solved during this Monday was the processing of the amnesty law. Despite the Socialists' intention to have it signed by all parliamentary groups that are promoting it(PSOE, Sumar, Junts, ERC, PNB, Bildu and BNG), it was finally registered by the Socialists alone in the Congress of Deputies late this Monday afternoon. Some of the groups that had to sign it mentioned that they were waiting on the "polishing" of certain details; ERC sources said that they were still concerned about the "maximum legal certainty" of the text, which they expected to resolve in the next few hours or days. Armengol explained that the processing of the bill "will run its normal course like any initiative". The congressional governance organ, the Bureau, meets on Tuesday and it remains to be seen whether it will be consider the bill that entered Congress today.
Far-right rallies announced for investiture days
The speaker of Spain's lower house was asked after her appearance about the demonstrations that these days are blocking streets in the centre of Madrid and turning the Spanish capital into a battleground in which right-wing Spanish nationalists take on the police. For Wednesday and Thursday, new rallies have been called in front of the Congress of Deputies, on the occasion of the investiture of Pedro Sánchez.
Armengol did not show herself as concerned that the extremists who plan to gather in front of the chamber might try to enter it, in the style of the Trump supporters at the US Capitol. "I believe very much in dialogue and consensus, and in uniting the Spanish people through dialogue", affirmed the speaker, urging "concord", instead of " tension and division". "It is very important that at a time like this one that we are experiencing we appreciate democracy, institutions and dialogue as a way of understanding each other", she said.