Spain Notes, Sept 29: Feijóo loses again
Separatists to demand referendum effort from Sánchez as well as amnesty.
0/ Comment: have Catalan separatists just overplayed their hand?
1/ Feijóo (PP) lost the second-round vote to become Prime Minister, again as everyone expected him to. 177-172 (+1 null vote). Same result as the other day, same result as at the Speaker’s vote in August. The right just doesn’t have enough support to form a government after the July general election.
2/ Socialist parliamentary doberman Óscar Puente was involved in an incident on a high-speed train to Madrid on the way to the debate, with a passenger remonstrating with him and police getting involved, causing a delay of 45 minutes. He reached parliament in time to tell Feijóo that he was going to leave the chamber “as the leader of the opposition”.
3/ Vox said Sánchez was “the most corrupt Prime Minister in the history of Spain”; Sumar thought Feijóo was not going to become the new PM “because your hands and feet are tied to the far-right”; Esquerra said it was time to talk about a referendum as well as the amnesty, “don’t force us to stay in this country, we’ve had enough”.
4/ Catalan separatists voted in the regional parliament (65-54) in Barcelona not to support any national Prime Minister that did not “commit to working towards making the conditions for holding [an independence] referendum effective”.
5/ The Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and the national Socialist Party (PSOE) issued a joint statement in reply to the idea last night: “Dialogue must be used to overcome division, not to deepen the rupture and discord”, it said, in reference to the “sterile tension” generated in Spain and Catalonia over the issue in previous years: “there is no way forward possible down that path”.
6/ Catalan socialist leader Illa (Health Minister during the pandemic) said that “there has never been a possibility of walking the path of rupture and division” and that whatever happens needs to do so “within the Constitution”.
7/ In an incident yesterday in the City Hall chamber in Madrid, socialist councillor Daniel Viondi walked up to Mayor Almeida (PP) and touched him several times on the face in a menacing manner. The Mayor immediately protested, “you may never touch my face again”, and Viondi was thrown out and then resigned shortly after amid howls of social media protest.
8/ Ciudadanos hasn’t quite finished sinking itself but every few weeks, they make the hole in what’s left of the ship a bit bigger. Yesterday it said it would expel two well-known faces and senior party members, former national spokesman Edmundo Bal and ther former leader in Castilla y León, Francisco Igea, for criticising the decision not to run at the general election in July.
9/ The former First Minister of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre (PP), said Feijóo should lend some conservative MPs to the PSOE to vote in favour of Sánchez, “as many as he needs”, so that he wouldn’t be bound to his partnership with “communists, separatists and terrorist lovers”. She said that was what she would do and that she was certain Sánchez would reject the offer anyway...
10/ …but Feijóo quickly rejected the idea of any PP abstention in favour of Sánchez while speaking in parliament.
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