The president of the Popular Party of Spain (PP, right), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said on Monday that he has already started contacts to try to form a government after Sunday’s elections and reiterated that the candidate with the most votes should govern.
The PP won the legislative elections on Sunday without achieving an absolute majority alone or with the far-right Vox party, with which it governs in coalition in three autonomous communities of Spain, with the result of the vote leaving open the possibility of a device led by the Socialists (PSOE), with the parliamentary support of nationalists and independentistas.
Feijóo said on Monday that “as the leader of the most voted party” he had already initiated contacts with various political forces with the aim of soon forming “a stable government in Spain” and assured the support of one of them, the União do Povo Navarro (UPN), who elected a deputy on Sunday.
The PP elected 136 deputies and 176 are needed to obtain an absolute majority in Parliament.
Feijóo said that he had also contacted the Canary Islands Coalition (1 deputy) and that “the way was open” to support a PP government. In addition, after a first contact, he hopes to continue the talks in the coming days with the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV, 5 deputies) and with Vox (33 deputies).
The PNV made viable in the last legislature the current leftist and extreme left government led by the socialist Pedro Sánchez and affirmed, during the electoral campaign of the legislative elections on Sunday, that the PP crossed an unacceptable line by making agreements with Vox in several autonomous communities and municipalities.
The president of the PNV, Andoni Ortuzar, said this Sunday that the party’s votes “seem to be decisive again” and guaranteed that they will be managed responsibly, “combining the binomial of the defense of Euskadi [o País Basco]on the one hand, and the consolidation and advancement of democratic principles, on the other”, without achieving more.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo announced this Monday that he also contacted the PSOE and that he agreed to speak again with the leader of the Socialists and Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, after the final and formal scrutiny of the electoral result, scheduled for next Friday.
The PP leader was speaking at the beginning of a meeting of the party’s national leadership, in Madrid, in an intervention that was broadcast on popular social networks.
Feijóo has once again stressed that in Spain the party with the most votes should govern and that the country “needs a change, a new era, moderation and understanding in the Government, without depending on radical and pro-independence minorities”.
The PP leader said that in Spain the party with the most votes has always governed and criticized the possibility that there is now a “coalition of losers”, with “even greater demands and a greater presence of independentistas”, including that of “a party led by a fugitive from Spanish justice”.
Feijóo was referring to the former president of the Generalitat of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont, who has lived in Belgium since the Catalan independence attempt in 2017, to escape Spanish justice.
Puigdemont’s party, Together for Catalonia (JxCat), elected six deputies this Sunday who may be decisive in the formation of the next Spanish government, given the alignments of the different forces with the left or the right.
The PSOE leadership was also in a meeting this Monday, with the presence of Pedro Sánchez, but there were no official statements at the end of the meeting.
Pedro Sánchez celebrated on Sunday the “failure of the upside-down block”, said that there are “many more” who want “Spain to advance, and it will continue to be so”, but he gave no indication of what he will do or when in relation to the formation of a new executive.
Sources from the PSOE leadership quoted by several Spanish media assured that Sánchez said at today’s meeting that “democracy will find the formula for governability” and that there will be no blockade that leads to the repetition of the elections, without revealing any step or negotiation with a view to forming a left-wing government.
The person who has already started negotiations with the pro-independence parties of Catalonia today is Sumar, the extreme left platform led by the current Minister of Labor and Vice President of the Spanish Government, Yolanda Díaz.
PSOE and Sumar campaigned on their intention to govern together in the next legislature.
Source: TSF
