The PNV and its five representatives in Congress are not currently involved in the investiture agreement for Pedro Sánchez. And the message that the leadership of this party of Euskadi sends is that the negotiations continue, that they are stuck on issues that are not trivial for this party but that they do not want to show publicly because they defend their interests The approach to these processes differs from that of other parties. They like the government to have “less haste and less intensity” or interest in making a deal with them than with other groups. The leadership of the PNV, the Euzkadi Buru Batzar, has decreed absolute secrecy and none of its leaders will make statements or give interviews these days. The talks will be led in Madrid by his parliamentary spokesman Aitor Esteban, who is in constant contact with the president of the PNV, Andoni Ortuzar, who has met Carles Puigdemont at least twice in Brussels in recent weeks.
As many as three different sources related to the official leadership of the PNV confirm that this party has not yet reached an agreement with the PSOE and therefore its votes cannot yet be taken for granted. These five deputies are crucial to the success of Sánchez’s inauguration, which does not yet have a date.
What the PNV leadership wants to say, however, is that their negotiations are continuing, that the week has been “intensive” contacts between their interlocutor in Madrid and the PSOE and government negotiators, that the differences noted are “not minor” and that they will remain silent in order to “shield” the process and not have any influence on the points that now separate them. There is nothing new in either the content or the way in which the PNV usually approaches such processes with governments of all political stripes in Madrid.
Aitor Esteban has spent much of the week in the capital and was still in Madrid this Friday because he also attended the meeting of the Speakers’ Committee of the Congress, which had not been scheduled since September 19 last year. Esteban reports the status of the situation directly to Ortuzar. Sources from this group did not dare to rule out or confirm that new meetings could take place this weekend, although they said it was more likely that they would take place on Monday. Time is of the essence, because a new table has been set for Tuesday and, in theory, the government and the PSOE would like to make the date of the investiture debate official now, if they do not do so earlier, when the pact with Junts is concluded.
In the PNV they emphasize that their negotiations should not be mixed with those of other parties and they specifically refer to Junts, a formation with which they have maintained good relations in the past but which was damaged in 2017 after the explicit attempts at mediation At Highest A movement developed at the level among the leadership of these parties to avoid the unilateral declaration of independence that the former Catalan President Puigdemont announced for a few minutes. This connection was re-established and Ortuzar even traveled to Waterloo on September 15 to hold an official and public meeting at Puigdemont’s residence, and he did the same on Wednesday last week, in this case to arrange a more private meeting with the leader of the Junts in the same room of the European Parliament where he met this Thursday with the organizing secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán. The PNV’s agenda is not the same as that of the Junts, as it does not call for the transfer of surrounding territories (rodalíes) or debt relief, since Euskadi enjoys a different economic quota. However, the PNV is interested in knowing the position of Junts and Puigdemont on the state model and, moreover, does not want to maintain this type of contact by telephone or electronically.
The Basque party completely refuses to play an intermediary role or a “joint operation” at this stage in these negotiations between the central government, the PSOE and the Junts, but admits that it can “encourage” and “de-escalate” with it the agreement comes into effect. Go ahead and there is an executive and an investiture by Pedro Sánchez.
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