Most of the polls indicated that the key to the next government would be held by the right, but the adjusted Spanish legislative elections converted the Catalan independentist Carles Puigdemont in an unexpected protagonist, since his training could be key.
Despite the fact that the Popular Party (PP) won the elections, its result was not enough to achieve an absolute majoritynot even with eventual support from voxwhich greatly complicates his options to be able to govern.
This opens the way for the president of the outgoing government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, to try to negotiate a complex investiture. He already has the support of the left-wing Sumar coalition, and now he should once again win the support of various Basque, Catalan and Galician nationalist parties, with whom he usually counts in Congress.
But this time Sánchez would also need the decisive abstention of the seven deputies achieved by Junts per Catalunya, the formation founded by Puigdemont.
Sumar announced on Monday that it commissioned one of its former leaders in Catalonia to start negotiations with Junts to “explore all avenues of agreement.”
One day you are decisive in forming the Spanish government, and the next Spain orders your arrest
After knowing the results On Sunday, all eyes fell on Belgium where – to avoid Spanish justice – the former Catalan regional president has resided since the failed secession attempt in 2017.
“One day you are decisive in forming the Spanish government, and the next Spain orders your arrest,” Puigdemont ironized this Monday on Twitter, shortly after the Prosecutor’s Office requested to reactivate his arrest warrant after the rejection by European justice of the appeal against the lifting of his immunity.
Representative of the hard line of the secessionist, and contrary to the dialogue undertaken with Madrid, Junts adopted a position of systematic opposition to the Sánchez government, unlike the other great independence party, ERC, which became one of its regular supporters.
And, now in a key position, the leaders of Junts do not intend to make things easy. “We will not make Pedro Sánchez president in exchange for nothing, our priority is Catalonia, it is not the governability of the Spanish State,” Miriam Nogueras, head of the list to Congress, assured the same Sunday night.
From Junts, who already voted against Sánchez’s investiture in 2020, they reiterate that their positions have never changedand they will not facilitate the government of anyone who does not support a self-determination referendum in Catalonia and the amnesty of those accused for their role in the secessionist attempt.
The holding by the government led by Puigdemont of a referendum in 2017, despite the prohibition of justice, led to one of the most serious political crises experienced in Spain in recent decades.
Despite the fact that Sánchez -who made détente in Catalonia one of his priorities after coming to power in 2018- made decisions such as pardoning the nine pro-independence politicians in prison, the socialist leader would never give in to those demands, analysts estimate.
“Any of these two conditions are completely unassumable by any government in Spain, or by a party at the state level,” said Ana Sofía Cardenal, a professor of Political Science at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. At Junts “they know that this is unaffordable, but they are going to go all the way,” she added.
The final decision of the formation will depend, however, on its own calculations and its close competition with ERC, which has been showing a marked loss of votes in the last elections.
“If Junts is responsible for an electoral repetition, how is that going to take its toll electorally? I think that is the question they are asking themselves now,” said Oriol Bartomeus, from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
If the formation finally values that a new scrutiny could “sink Esquerra”, which fell from 13 to 7 deputies in the legislature, they will choose not to facilitate the Sánchez government, says the researcher. The unexpected result on Sunday still leaves many open questions. “It’s like an irony of fate,” said Ana Sofía Cardenal.
“Many people from the PSOE who have gone to the right with the Catalan issue” -in reference to Sánchez’s concessions to the independence movement, highly controversial even within his own party- “and it turns out that (Puigdemont) is at the center of the political board for the governability of Spain”, he indicated.
AFP
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