Since the July 23 general elections, Pedro Sanchez has been trying to get himself re-appointed as prime minister. The Socialist leader has made a pact with the radical leftist Sumar, but has yet to convince the separatists to join a coalition.
The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and the radical left-wing party Sumar announced on Tuesday, October 24, that they had reached an agreement to form a “progressive government.” Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez and Sumar leader Yolanda Diaz, current labor minister, have finalized the details of a “government pact” that emerged from negotiations that began since the end of July, they said. the two political parties specified in a press release.
The agreement signed between the PSOE and Sumar will serve as a “programmatic” framework for the next “legislative period”, according to the two parties, who plan to officially ratify it later today in the presence of the two political leaders. These include, in particular, “advances” in the field of work, “such as the reduction of working hours without sacrificing wages” and “the immediate implementation of a shock plan” against “youth unemployment” as well as “the upward correction of the climate in Spain”. Goals, they add.
Sanchez must win the support of the separatists
Pedro Sanchez came second to Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s People’s Party (PP, right) in the July 23 general election. However, since it lacked an absolute majority, it was unable to form a coalition, which paved the way for a new left-wing government. The agreement between the PSOE and Sumar represents an important step towards the reappointment of Pedro Sanchez, who has ruled in a coalition with the far left since 2020.
However, for this to happen, Pedro Sanchez still needs to win the support of Basque separatists, especially Bildu, a group seen as the heir to the political model of the armed organization ETA (now disbanded), which has already announced that it would vote to block him on the right. He also needs the support of Catalan separatists, particularly the Junts per Catalunya (JxCat), a group that was behind a failed attempt to secede from Catalonia in 2017 and whose leader Carles Puigdemont fled to Belgium to avoid Spanish justice.
The latter, which has seven MPs, along with the other Catalan independence party, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), have raised the stakes in recent weeks, notably by demanding an amnesty for those responsible for the 2017 attempted secession. This proposal is met by the right and denounced by the extreme right and criticized within the Socialist Party itself.