Andoni Ortuzar, president of the PNV, wanted to solemnize his new pact with the PSOE and went to Madrid this Friday to sign it in person with Pedro Sánchez. There, before the press, he left his Basque mark in an image that defined with simplicity and precision the legislature that awaits the socialist leader: “We are all in the same trawler and we have to try not to let the blades collide.”
The planned final agreement with the PNV and the most surprising one with the Canary Coalition (CC) finished this Friday laying the pillars that will allow Sánchez’s new investiture as President of the Government next week. Almost four years ago, in January 2020, Congress re-elected the general secretary of the PSOE to lead the Executive in the closest investiture vote in history: 167 in favor and 165 against. Sánchez needed two votes and everyone predicted that it would be a short term. Great trigger from the fortunetellers: the socialist managed to approve all of his Budgets and completed a mandate of three years, eight months and 13 days, the fourth longest in the 15 that have happened since 1977.
Last July, the socialist leader emerged from the elections with an even more complicated outlook. He was not even the most voted force and his fate was left in the hands of a complete unknown, Junts per Catalunya, a party located on the margins of Spanish institutions and whose leader is fleeing from justice abroad. After three months rocking in uncertainty and with the constant threat of an electoral repetition promoted by the right in search of a second chance, Sánchez will be inaugurated, probably next Thursday, without the need for a second vote. Barring absences or accidents, he will gather 179 votes in his favor, 12 more than four years ago. The entire Congress, except PP, Vox and the only representative of the Unión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN). As the political scientist Juan Rodríguez Teruel recalled on Twittermore seats will support him than Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo in 1981, Felipe González in 1986, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in his two terms (2004 and 2008) and Mariano Rajoy in 2016.
The trawler described by Ortuzar will navigate white waters with a diverse crew on board. There will be blades predisposed to clash because they compete in a similar space and with elections in sight in a few months, such as the PNV itself and EH Bildu in Euskadi, and Junts and ERC in Catalonia. Forces located on the leftmost spectrum and others historically attached to the center-right current will come together. The predictions once again agree that this amalgam cannot last long, if it were not for the fact that the prophets are always exposed to ridicule with Sánchez, as has been amply proven.
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The long-awaited agreement between the PSOE and the PNV did not come to fruition until the talks with Carles Puigdemont and his closest entourage were finally unblocked on Thursday in Brussels. It was already early Friday morning when an agreement negotiated remotely from Bilbao by Ortuzar and the PNV spokesperson in Congress, Aitor Esteban, was closed with the acting Minister of Finance and deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero.
With the support of the PNV secured, Sánchez’s investiture was guaranteed 178 votes in favor, two more than the absolute majority. But the PSOE made great efforts to also add to CC, a single deputy with great political value. The socialists thus try to demonstrate that their parliamentary base is not only nourished by the “enemies of Spain”, as the right usually calls the independentists, but also by forces in temperate positions, capable of supporting the Government and at the same time rejecting the amnesty for the prosecuted by processes, as will CC. The Canarian nationalists constituted, along with Vox and UPN, the only supports, outside of the PP, that Alberto Núñez Feijóo dragged along in his unsuccessful attempt at investiture. What’s more, they govern with the popular ones on the islands after an agreement to unseat the PSOE, the most voted in the regional elections in May.
With this operation, and in the face of the rampant offensive that the right is deploying against the amnesty project, the socialists try to offer the image of an isolated PP linked to Vox. “In the face of those who can only agree with themselves or with the extreme right, we are capable of doing so with the entire parliamentary arc,” Montero boasted after signing the agreement with CC.
In his Madrid foray, Ortuzar made it clear that the PNV’s relations with the PP have been broken for a long time. The demonstrations in front of the PSOE headquarters have produced “horror” for the nationalist leader and confirm it, as he explained, in the decision that his party made the day after the elections not to even negotiate with the popular party as long as they do not break with Vox.
The signing of the agreements brought a morning of satisfied smiles in Congress. The signed papers are full of great intentions, only now we will have to see how they are put into practice. The first proof that it will not be easy came very soon: María Jesús Montero was quick to cool down the possibility of ceding the economic regime of Social Security to the Basque Country, a competition provided for in its Statute and that Ortuzar had announced with optimism. Likewise, it will be necessary to see how far the PSOE is willing to go in the face of the PNV’s intention to enshrine the “national recognition of Euskadi” through a new Statute.
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