2023-10-03 13:45:25
King Felipe VI has commissioned acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to form a new government in Spain. The head of state decided this following a new two-day round of consultations with party leaders, said Lower House President Francina Armengol on Tuesday in Madrid. Armengol must now, in consultation with Sánchez, set the date for the vote in the lower house on the 51-year-old socialist’s candidacy.
After the first round of consultations, Felipe initially commissioned opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo in August, whose conservative People’s Party PP won the early parliamentary election on July 23rd ahead of Sánchez’s Socialists (PSOE). But Feijóo’s candidacy was rejected by the lower house last week. In the first round, the candidate needs an absolute majority of at least 176 yes votes. In the second round, a simple majority is sufficient.
The socialist is given better chances than Feijóo. But Sánchez also faces a very difficult task. Among other things, he needs the votes of the left-wing ERC party of Catalan Prime Minister Pere Aragonès and the conservative Junts party of the separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, who lives in exile in Belgium. Both strive for independence for Catalonia and, in return for their support, are demanding an amnesty for those separatists who took part in the failed attempt to secede in autumn 2017.
Sánchez is under pressure: If no head of government is found by November 27th, the Spaniards would have to go to the polls once more on January 14th. It’s not just a domestic political blockade that threatens. This would mean that Spain’s entire EU Council Presidency until December 31st would be overshadowed by political uncertainty in the fourth largest economy in the eurozone.
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