What had to happen happened, which, no matter how many lures or invitations to transfuguism were launched, had been in the works for a month. And what, barring cataclysm, will happen again next Friday, when the second and final vote takes place in Congress on the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The first was held this Wednesday with the outcome known to all in advance: the leader of the PP was four votes short of the absolute majority by gathering only 172, his own, those of Vox and those of the only deputies of the Canary Coalition (CC ) and Union of the Navarro People (UPN). Feijóo came face to face with the rest of the Chamber, 178 seats that bring together the left and Catalan, Basque and Galician nationalisms, in the latter case without distinction between conservatives and progressives. The only uncertainty in the vote carried out by voice was produced by the error of the socialist deputy Herminio Sancho, who first stammered a yes, only to immediately correct it.
If the defeat was taken for granted, the debate – in the absence of the last vote, as lacking in intrigue as the first – has allowed Feijóo to catapult his figure as head of the opposition and the PP to close ranks with its leader to silence the who speculated with their internal questioning. The enthusiastic ovations that his parliamentarians have given him on the two days of debate have left no room for doubt in this regard. On the other hand, the avenues to seek allies among the ranks of conservative nationalism this Wednesday enlisted in Sánchez’s majority have been closed even more. Especially in the case of the formation that Feijóo has pursued most ardently, the PNV, whose spokesperson, Aitor Esteban, concluded his dialectical exchange with the popular leader with an irony: “Today you have made more friends.”
Almost none of the groups in front of him refrained from attacking Feijóo, predicting an ephemeral leadership. “He’s looking like Pablo Casado,” Gabriel Rufián, from ERC, had told him the day before. He also spoke this Wednesday to his countryman Néstor Rego, from the BNG: “This is his political funeral.” Rufián and other spokesmen had warned him against the applause of his people: “Don’t trust him. They also applauded Casado until they stabbed him.” But the truth is that Feijóo’s performance on the initial day of the debate had already left his deputies very satisfied and in this second meeting the displays of enthusiasm and thunderous applause multiplied.
The session resumed with the intervention of the two Basque nationalist groups, EH Bildu and PNV. Feijóo assured that he had no plans to respond to the spokesperson of the left abertzale, Mertxe Aizpurua, but that he had changed his mind after listening to her. The presidential candidate changed his plans so much that he dedicated more minutes to EH Bildu than to anyone else, while the clapping of his party accompanied him like an incessant soundtrack. Aizpurua did not beat around the bush and made it clear from the first moment that his group is with the majority that supports Sánchez, whom he hopes will launch a “plurinational and deeply social” agenda. The vote of the left abertzalehe stressed, will always be used to confront the “denialist, recentralizing and reactionary” axis.
“I would be very worried if you voted for us,” replied Feijóo, who took advantage of Aizpurua’s criticism of the Transition to blurt out: “The ’78 regime is what allows you to be here despite everything you have done.” Between ovation and ovation, the candidate spoke at length about the crimes of ETA, Josu Ternera or those convicted of terrorism on the Bildu lists. And there was, of course, the attack on Pedro Sánchez: “You have to have a lot of courage to agree with those who do not condemn the murders of your party colleagues.”
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The duel with Aitor Esteban was more problematic for Feijóo. The PNV spokesperson reiterated that his group had made it very clear from the beginning that he would not support it. On the one hand, due to his agreements with Vox and on the other, due to the PP’s own speech: “Is it typical of a state party to launch harangues against half of the country?” Feijóo responded by suggesting that the PNV has barely achieved anything useful from its alliance with Sánchez and putting his finger in the wound of its internal competition with Bildu. Esteban’s response was short and forceful. He began by telling her that “it wouldn’t deserve a reply,” he reminded her that the popular people have voted with Bildu on half of the laws approved in the Basque Parliament and finished with that warning that this was not exactly the beginning of a great friendship. Feijóo tried to fix it at the end of the plenary session by coming to talk privately.
From the Mixed Group the support of CC and UPN came to the PP. The Canarian deputy Cristina Valido justified it because the popular people have accepted all the demands raised for the islands, although she specified: “That does not mean that we assume their ideology.” The support of the Navarrese foralistas is completely ideological. “Those who want to destroy it cannot govern Spain,” summarized its deputy Alberto Catalán. The negative among the smaller formations was that of the BNG, which became entangled with Feijóo in a discussion about his legacy in the Xunta, peppered with express allusions by both parties to the regional elections scheduled for next year in Galicia, where nationalism He heads the opposition to the PP.
Among the conclusions left by the investiture, one of the most relevant is to note the new times of cordiality that have opened between PP and Vox. Feijóo evidenced this in his final words, when on two occasions he became the representative of “11 million voters”, those who make up his party and the extreme right. The candidate said goodbye with a new recrimination against Sánchez for having remained on the sidelines of the debate: “Here we have all portrayed ourselves, with our words and our silences.” The final chapter will be in two days and nothing indicates that it will deviate from the script written this Wednesday.
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