The PSOE faces the attempted investiture of Pedro Sánchez under the slogan of exhibiting internal unity and closing ranks around its general secretary. The King begins a new round of consultations today, once Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s attempt to gain the confidence of Congress failed, and this Sunday all the provincial and island secretaries of the PSOE and the former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero signed a manifesto of support for its leader in the formation of a progressive Executive “that gives continuity to the last five years of progress in Spain.”
The document does not specifically name an eventual amnesty law or the organization of a self-determination referendum in Catalonia, the price that Junts and Esquerra – whose support is essential – have set in exchange for the votes of their deputies, but each paragraph distills the idea of that the pressure on the PSOE will increase as the date chosen to hold the investiture session approaches.
If there are fissures within the house, the objective will be even more complicated, which is why they encourage the party’s membership to join the manifesto. «The trust in him is the trust that we place in the formation of a progressive Executive that opens a new stage of social advances, in favor of a democracy based on gender equality, on coexistence that rests on the recognition of the diversity of Spain, of its democratic memory and the spirit of coexistence,” says the text.
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The list of signatories does not include leaders critical of the socialist leadership such as the Castilian president of La Mancha, Emiliano García Page, or historical leaders such as Felipe Gónzalez or Alfonso Guerra. These absences are resolved by the position that accompanies the accessions: provincial leaders, and not autonomous ones. In the document, however, the president of Asturias, Adrian Barbón, does appear, but in his capacity as secretary general of the Asturian Socialist Federation, and the leader of the Madrid socialists, Juan Lobato, who belongs to a uniprovincial territory, among others.
In the document they charge against PP and Vox by considering that on 23-J “they asked for the vote to repeal the work of a progressive Government with a strategy based exclusively on insults and lies.” A bet that, they claim, “failed.” «If PP and Vox had had enough votes, today Spain would have a Government of the right and the extreme right. Exactly the same as has happened in all the communities and town councils where they have joined, although the PSOE was the most voted force in many of them,” they conclude.
«Pedagogy of amnesty»
In the PP, they consider this action and the fact that it was Óscar Puente who represented the PSOE in Feijóo’s investiture session as a parapet for the president, “who sent others from his party to teach the amnesty.” The general coordinator of the popular party, Elías Bendodo, demanded this Sunday that Sánchez “come out of hiding” and commit “in writing” that he will not accept the amnesty or the independence referendum in Catalonia. “Never has a silence been so thunderous and so clarifying,” said the PP leader at an event in Oviedo. “What he hides is what the independence movement confirms: that an amnesty and a referendum in Catalonia against the Constitution, and only technical issues remain.
For this reason, Bendodo asked the President of the Government to explain “how a self-determination referendum in Catalonia is going to fit into the Constitution.”
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