Sánchez bets everything on the pact with Junts despite the pressure against the amnesty

The acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, addresses the media on the 5th in Madrid.FERNANDO VILLAR (EFE)

Everyone who has spoken with Pedro Sánchez in recent days conveys the same idea: the president is completely determined to seek the pact with Junts and carry out his investiture at a high cost. The opposition has raised the level of criticism this week and is preparing an offensive against this negotiation. But in addition, the old guard of his party has joined this rejection, led by Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra, who demand that the president not grant an amnesty law to the independentists because they see it as unconstitutional.

In the face of all this external pressure, Sánchez is absolutely determined to endure and maintain the course of the negotiation with Junts, ERC, PNV, Bildu and the other allies that leads him directly to the investiture, according to all the sources in his environment consulted. The electoral repetition, a high-risk operation that already went wrong in 2019 – the PSOE lost votes, seats and margin of governability – is not even considered in La Moncloa as an option. Sánchez has ordered to go all out to get the investiture, and that is what his negotiators are doing, with Félix Bolaños at the helm.

At the top of the Government and the PSOE, this hostile environment is experienced in several sectors, which are convinced that it will get even worse as the date approaches, as a new episode of the agonizing investiture attempts that Sánchez has experienced since 2014, when he took office. party position after winning his first primaries. “It’s been business as usual since 2016. Like in 2018 and then in 2019. It’s always the same. Spain is broken! Well, there are the results in Catalonia, and therefore, in Spain,” they say from the president’s entourage.

That appeal to 2016, when he attempted an investiture that he failed to achieve and was then removed so that the PSOE abstained and allowed the Government of Mariano Rajoy, or to 2018, when there was also rejection of a motion of censure supported by the independentists, or to 2019- 2020, when his investiture was on the verge of failure due to the enormous pressure against the pact with ERC, is important in the psychology and political history of Sánchez and his closest team, totally determined to endure whatever it takes to achieve a majority and avoid electoral repetition, according to all the sources of that hard core consulted.

The president has an absolutely atypical political career, in which after being overthrown by an internal coup by the territorial barons with support from the old guard, he returned to win a primary against the entire PSOE establishment. Sánchez only has one book published, and he titled it Manual de resistance. He has built his epic around his ability to stand up to all possible criticism.

The ‘former president’ Carles Puigdemont at an exhibition in Brussels on September 5.OLIVIER MATTHYS (EFE)

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And now, when after many called him finished, he has obtained a million more votes than anyone expected, Sánchez feels absolutely legitimized to take the leap of promoting a definitive shelving of the process in the form of an amnesty, after taking steps very relevant such as pardons and the reform of the Penal Code for the crimes of sedition and embezzlement. There are no doubts around him, nor do they feel the blows of criticism from PSOE historical figures or from the two barons who are always furthest from the president, Emiliano García-Page and Javier Lambán. “It will be very hard, but it will come out. “People want a progressive Government,” summarizes a minister. “We did not see some veterans asking for the vote to win the 23J and the militancy does not forgive that,” says a territorial baron when talking about González and Guerra. Other leaders fear that the opposition will raise the level in October, when negotiations intensify, and even lead to demonstrations in front of the PSOE headquarters. But still, everyone seems determined to hold on.

The Asturian president, Adrián Barbón, one of the few who has survived the burning of the regional elections in May, summarized a widespread feeling among the barons, mayors and regional leaders in a party where Sánchez has practically no internal opposition beyond Page and Lambán: “What I want is for there to be a Pedro Sánchez Government. One that raises pensions, the minimum wage and scholarships. My position is that there is a Government, at whatever price, but always within the Constitution,” Barbón stated on Friday. And that, that whatever is done will be constitutional, is what the president and his ministers are guaranteeing every day. In the hard core they insist: although many in the PSOE have said that the amnesty was unconstitutional, including the president, the issue is how this law, which might not be called that, is made so that it fits into the Constitution.

Despite criticism from some historians, Sánchez and his team insist that the PSOE “is a bunch” and what there is is “noise” but no fundamental movement to oppose the amnesty. Some criticize that the president and his team do not come out more clearly to explain what they are negotiating and defend his position in the face of a wave of rejection that is growing. Those around Sánchez say that this will happen, and the PSOE will fight that battle, but now, in the midst of negotiations, we must maintain discretion and for the moment let Feijóo be the one who fails in his investiture and then take the initiative. “The party is behind us. And when it’s our turn, we’ll talk. The PSOE will speak emphatically and forcefully. Until then, we are going to respect the turn of this waste of time that Feijóo has marked,” they point out in the president’s circle. It is, above all, a way to save time while negotiating discreetly.

Absence of Sánchez in the G20

An unexpected positive for covid has kept Sánchez away from New Delhi, where the G20 is being held. It is the first time that the president has missed such an important appointment in his five years in office. The leader of the PSOE precisely wanted to be in India to maintain his international agenda and in the process show the Spaniards that while Alberto Núñez Feijóo goes out of his way without success to try for one more vote than the 172 he was guaranteed a month ago, he is with the leaders of the planet showing that he still has a long political career left. Next week, the week before Feijóo’s inauguration, Sánchez will be in New York at the UN summit and there he will be able to reinforce that image. The idea that Sánchez remains president while Feijóo has more and more votes to be leader of the opposition is important for La Moncloa, which is convinced that this month the leader of the PP is wearing himself out much more than expected with internal battles of the party.

Even so, and although his main rival may suffer for not having obtained the seats he needs, no one in the Government denies the delicate nature of the current political situation, in which the investiture depends on a very difficult negotiation around an amnesty. for the process politically directed by a man like former president Carles Puigdemont, who has been in Brussels for six years to avoid the Spanish justice system, which would order him arrested the moment he set foot in Spain. That is why the explanation of this moment is so important, according to various regional barons consulted, who support the president but ask for clarity.

Sánchez waged a very strong political and public explanation battle with the pardons for the leaders of the process. And the idea is installed in the PSOE that it was quite successful. They were explained in detail, argued calmly, and the president himself organized a political event with businessmen, union members, journalists and intellectuals at the Liceu in Barcelona to defend them. On the contrary, none of this was done with the reform of the Penal Code at the end of 2022, which caused enormous wear and tear while the barons reproached the lack of explanations. The new leap is even more complex, with a shelving of ongoing judicial processes that Sánchez summarized this week with the idea that we must “turn the page.” That is why many in the PSOE, although they support the negotiation, believe that it is very important to explain it well so that citizens understand how far it has come and why. And in La Moncloa they assure that, when they can, they will do it.

But in the meantime, discretion is absolute to close the agreement with Junts and ERC, the most difficult both because of the content – the amnesty – and because of the difficulty of agreeing at the same time with two rivals who are very much at odds with each other, who have just broken the coalition with which they governed in the Generalitat. Junts is pressing very hard and is hurrying because it wants the amnesty to be definitively approved by Congress before Sánchez’s inauguration. Puigdemont’s negotiators have sent a report to the PSOE in which they assure that the norm could be approved in 40 days, even including the 20-day delay that the PP can force in the Senate if the norm goes through the urgent route.

The socialists see this operation as unviable and believe that it would be much more reasonable to negotiate a political pact with the reform included but not aspire for such a complex text to be definitively approved in less than two months, the maximum period that Sánchez has to take office from Feijóo’s first failed vote, on Wednesday the 27th. Negotiations will intensify in the coming days, when there is some agreement on dates, methods and frameworks.

While many were outraged with Puigdemont this Tuesday, Sánchez’s leadership, which knows the state of the negotiations, received his conference in Brussels with relief, because he did not ask for what they feared most: the self-determination referendum, something that would have broken everything. There was a lot of previous work to warn that it was the end. Now we must negotiate to lower the maximum positions expressed by the former president, and try to soften one of the most delicate points: his appeal that they are willing to repeat another process. But in La Moncloa they are convinced that there will be an agreement because it is beneficial for everyone and Junts has clearly shown that it wants to negotiate. The decisions seem firm on both sides, and the other partners are also willing. But now comes the phase in which negotiations usually derail: the one that involves putting political will on paper, on the laws. Go from the muses to the theater.

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