SPAIN’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez will next week meet leaders of rival parties after Sunday’s general election left him without enough MPs to form a majority administration.
The Socialist party (PSOE) leader will meet People’s party (PP) boss Pablo Casado on Monday, following on Tuesday by talks with Citizens leader Albert Rivera and Pablo Iglesias, who heads the left-wing, anti-austerity party Podemos (We Can).
He will not meet leader of the far-right Vox party, Santiago Abascal.
The PSOE said after the election result was announced that it wanted to govern alone, perhaps a wise move given that Sanchez has already fallen out with Casado and Rivera, but it could be a hazardous one for Sanchez, who is unlikely to achieve the left-wing coalition government he would prefer.
Iglesias has said going it alone would be an act of “political irresponsibility”, and spelled out the price of Podem’s support for Sanchez’s investiture.
He told Spanish TV station La Sexta: “We hope to see what he talks about with PP and Cs and then, if there are guarantees and the will of the PSOE to work for a leftist government, our hand is open.
“If someone tends to authoritarianism, arrogance … we will be like a rock. There will be only majorities if we can agree. The era of arrogance has ended.”
In his first comments after the election result, Catalan President Quim Torra urged Sanchez to have the “strength and courage to go back to where we left off”.
He added: “We’re still waiting there.”
A Catalan Government spokesperson had earlier invited Spanish authorities to “rebuild our bridges without anyone imposing any pre-conditions”, and Torra said the basis for that would be to recognise Catalonia as a political subject with whom they could form a bilateral relationship. However, he said it would have to accept that the Catalan Government could bring to the table the right to self determination and the ending of political repression.
“This time allow me to wait. Until there is a desire to sit down and talk, it’s now his turn to make a move,” said Torra.
The Catalan president is playing his cards close to his chest, but the Supreme Court’s verdict in the trial of 12 independence leaders may well force his hand.
“I won’t accept any verdict other than an acquittal,” he said yesterday. “When the Supreme Court’s decision is known, the people of Catalonia will find themselves at a crossroads, a turning point.
“If these ‘not guilty’ verdicts
do not come, I will propose to
Parliament a response that must be based on the right to self-
determination.”
That could signal an election in Catalonia ahead of the current parliament’s February 2022 deadline.
Elsewhere, Oriol Junqueras, one of those on trial and a candidate for the European Commission presidency, missed the first debate for the position at the University of Maastricht, because he is in jail.
Meanwhile, an online petition calling for the reinstatement as European candidates of former president Carles Puigdemont, Clara Ponsati and Toni Comin – who were barred from standing by Spain’s electoral board – had last night been signed by almost 90,000 supporters.
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