Francina Armengol, president of the Congress after the agreement with Junts and ERC

The PSOE gets the first step to keep the Moncloa. The socialist Francina Armengol has been elected this Thursday president of the Congress of Deputies thanks to the agreement with the progressive forces and an in extremis pact with Esquerra Republicana and Junts. An absolute majority with 178 votes in favor that make the Balearic Islands president of the Lower House and will allow the Socialists and Sumar to gain control of the Table.

Armengol has thus prevailed over the candidate proposed by the Popular Party, Cuca Gamarra, in a vote that directs the negotiation for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president of the Government, which once again depends on the will of Carles Puigdemont's. Gamarra has only managed to add the support of the Canary Islands Coalition and the Union of the Navarro People to the PP votes; Vox has decided to vote for its own candidate after verifying that those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo will not give them a position on the Congress Table.

Both Junts and ERC assure that this agreement is limited solely to the Mesa, but it is undoubtedly a first gesture that makes it easier for negotiations to begin to form a new coalition government. A PP victory this Thursday, all sources agree, would almost certainly have led to a repeat election.

Catalan separatists have kept this vote in suspense until the last minute. It was only cleared up during the Junts per Catalunya management meeting on the morning of this same Thursday. According to negotiating sources, the General Secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, would have communicated to his party during that conclave some details of the agreement reached.

According to Junts sources, among these agreements is the use of Catalan in Congress -to which Armengol would explicitly refer in today's speech after being elected-, the reopening of the investigation commission on the so-called 'State sewers' and the creation of a committee of investigation into the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils on 17-A.

The negotiation has not finished closing until this morning, with contacts that took place until the early hours of this Wednesday and crossed documents between the socialist negotiators and Junts, in addition to ERC. The Republicans have also given the green light to the last document, which contained the same commitments as with Junts.

The Republicans have also negotiated one last point, under the heading of the "dejudicialization" of the "political conflict" in Catalonia through the "necessary legal channels", which has ended up receiving the yes of the PSOE. ERC understands that this is a commitment that the Mesa will not block the processing of an amnesty law in case it is proposed.

As ERC has detailed, the possibility of using languages ​​other than Spanish will materialize in an organic law, which guarantees the use of Catalan in all State instances, including justice, and which also culminates the Government's commitments on the promotion of languages ​​in Europe.

Junts's position has been of maximum hardness until practically the end of the negotiation. Less than 24 hours after the vote, Junts had not made a decision on what he would do and the former president sent a message through X (formerly Twitter) in which he claimed "verifiable facts" to give his votes. Puigdemont was referring to public commitments, which for the moment the PSOE had circumvented. The negotiation, however, intensified hours later, when the negotiators accepted some of the independence demands to gain support for Armengol.

The agreed points are three demands that the Catalan parties had insisted on throughout the last legislature. The use of Catalan and languages ​​other than Spanish in Congress was one of the issues in which ERC and Junts considered that they could push the PSOE further, after Sumar had launched this proposal in recent weeks. It was more difficult to get investigative commissions into the use of the Pegasus program to spy on independentistas or the 17A attack, two matters on which the Socialists had never considered that a parliamentary commission should be opened.

The definitive document

But the negotiation with Junts has been definitively unblocked early this Thursday with the registration of a key document: the Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, has submitted a written request for Catalan, Basque and Galician to be languages co-officials of the European Union.

The registration occurred at 8:18 a.m. this Thursday. Albares has sent the petition to the European Council, in which the representatives of the Governments of the Member States meet to discuss and agree on modifications to the Treaties of the Union.

The petition, if approved, will mean that Catalan, Galician and Basque will be co-official languages ​​of the European Union: they will be able to be used in the European Parliament, political representatives will be able to address community institutions in that language and official documents will be also translated into those languages.

PSOE and Sumar guarantee a progressive majority in the Table

After obtaining the presidency, the PSOE and Sumar have guaranteed a progressive majority in the whole of the Table. This body is key to deciding highly relevant issues regarding the functioning of the Chamber during the legislature, such as who can or cannot form a parliamentary group when it is on the verge of what the regulation establishes, where the deputies sit, the hiring of the groups or the times of intervention in plenary.

Thanks to a pact between the eventual government partners, the PSOE is left with three positions on the Congress Table (the presidency, a vice-presidency and a secretary) and Sumar with two (a vice-presidency and a secretary). This allows the progressive bloc to control five of the nine positions in this body. Alfonso Gómez de Celis will repeat as first vice-president and Esther Gil, deputy of the coalition led by Yolanda Díaz, will have another vice-presidency. Gerardo Pisarello will repeat as secretary as part of Sumar's quota and Isaura Leal will be the secretary on behalf of the PSOE.

The Popular Party has taken over the rest of the posts. José Antonio Bermúdez de Castro and Marta González will have a vice-presidency each and Guillermo Mariscal and Carmen Navarro will be secretaries of the table. The PP had enough votes to guarantee those four positions on its own, although it could have given a seat to Vox as a gesture in view of a possible investiture vote for Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The popular have ruled out this movement, which has annoyed the far-right formation. Santiago Abascal's party, as a gesture of protest, has decided to vote for its own candidate for the presidency of Congress and not for Cuca Gamarra after verifying that they would not have a place on the Table.

Translation made with Google Translate.