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It’s Pedro Sánchez‘s time to shine.
Center-right Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo on Friday failed to win a second vote on his bid to form a government. Just as they did when an initial vote was held Wednesday, a majority of Spanish lawmakers rejected the conservative boss’s candidacy, with 177 voting against him and 172 in favor.
One vote was declared void: That of Catalan separatist Junts party MP Eduard Pujol, who accidentally voted for Feijóo but quickly retracted his support.
With Feijóo’s bid to become PM definitively rebuffed by the parliament, Spain’s King Felipe VI must now summon political leaders to Zarzuela Palace and once again quiz them on whom they think should be prime minister. The obvious candidate is caretaker PM and Socialist Party leader Sánchez, who has been biding his time while his conservative rival embarked on a quixotic quest to form a government.
In order to be reappointed prime minister, Sánchez needs to secure majority support in the parliament — and that means obtaining the backing of the Junts party, which is controlled by the self-exiled former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont.
While the Socialist leader is widely expected to give in to Puigdemont’s demand that a blanket amnesty be granted to everyone implicated in the failed 2017 Catalan independence referendum, it’s less clear whether he will acquiesce to the former president’s call for a new vote on Catalan self-determination.
Junts and the separatist Republican Left of Catalonia party, whose support Sánchez also needs, signed a pact on Thursday in which they vowed not to back the Socialist leader if he does not explicitly “commit to create the effective conditions for holding a referendum.”
The admitted lack of trust between the Catalan separatist groups and Madrid will make for delicate negotiations held with a countdown clock ticking in the background: Lawmakers’ initial rejection of Feijóo’s candidacy on Wednesday kicked off a two-month deadline, at the end of which parliament must be dissolved and a new national vote held 47 days later.
If Sánchez doesn’t want to fight a new election on January 14, 2024, he’ll have to move swiftly to secure the separatists’ support.
