Leaders of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) said this Thursday that nothing has been finalized in the negotiations to make a new Pedro Sánchez Government viable in Spain.
“I do not rule out new elections at all,” everything is “very open” and “anything can happen,” said deputy Aitor Esteban, of the PNV, to journalists in Madrid.
Oriol Junqueras, leader of ERC, also told reporters in Madrid, where he met with party deputies, that “nothing is closed” and the parties are “far from an agreement.”
Esteban and Junqueras’ statements come after this Thursday morning the leader of the PSOE and current President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, said that Spain will once again have a left-wing Government “in a short time”, after the elections on the 23rd. of July.
Sánchez negotiates the viability of a new Government led by the PSOE with the nationalist and independence parties, which demand amnesty for those involved in the unilateral declaration of independence of Catalonia in 2017.
The Catalan parties represented in the Spanish parliament (ERC and Together for Catalonia, owned by former regional president Carles Puigdemont) also want Sánchez to “commit to working to make the conditions effective” for a referendum on the region’s self-determination.
The two parties adopted this common position in relation to this Thursday’s negotiations for a referendum in a joint resolution proposal that they presented to the regional parliament.
In the text, ERC and JxCat ask the regional parliament to speak “in favor of the Catalan political forces represented in the Spanish Cortes not giving their support to an investiture of a future Spanish Government that does not commit to working to make effective the conditions” for there to be a referendum.
Pedro Sánchez, who until the July 23 elections rejected the possibility of amnesty, has not yet commented on the demands of the Catalan independentists.
The Popular Party (PP, right) obtained the largest number of votes in the July 23 elections and King Felipe VI nominated Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the Popular Party, as a candidate for prime minister, but the investiture was rejected by the deputies on Wednesday. fair, in a first vote that should be definitively confirmed on Friday.
Felipe VI should next name a new candidate for President of the Government and Pedro Sánchez, the second most voted in the elections, has already said that he is available and capable of gathering the necessary support in Parliament to return to office.
Sánchez says that he already demonstrated this on August 17, when the socialists managed to win the presidency of parliament thanks to the support of left-wing parties and nationalist and independence forces in Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country.
Source: TSF
