After Feijóo's failure, Sánchez begins the race to be sworn in in Spain
After Feijóo's failure, the Socialist Pedro Sánchez now faces a complex race against the clock to be sworn in as president of the government by the Spanish parliament, although to achieve this he will have to win the support of the Catalan independence supporters, who are constantly increasing their demands.
As expected, the leader of the Popular Party (PP, right), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, failed to win enough support to be sworn in as president of the government, despite having been the most voted candidate in the legislative elections of 23 July, although without a viable majority.
After a first setback on Wednesday, the conservative lost a second vote on Friday in which a simple majority would also have been enough for him.
With 172 votes in favour out of 350 - those of the PP, the extreme right and two small parties - his candidacy was rejected by another 177 MPs from the Socialist Party, the extreme left and regionalist groups.
One vote had to be counted as invalid, as a deputy who was not going to support Feijóo mistakenly voted in his favour, before retracting his vote.
With Feijóo defeated, outgoing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez should soon receive a mandate from King Felipe VI to try to form a majority before 27 November. If he fails to do so, elections would automatically be called for mid-January.
Sánchez optimistic
In power for the past five years, Sánchez, who has shown a keen sense of political survival in recent years, was again confident Thursday that he will succeed.
Spain "is preparing to repeat this progressive coalition government in a short time", he assured European socialists in Madrid.
But despite the optimism shown by the now acting president, the negotiations are looking increasingly delicate.
With the support of the far left, with whom he has been governing since 2020, and the Basque separatists, Sánchez needs the indispensable votes of Carles Puigdemont's Catalan pro-independence party, Junts per Catalunya (Junts), which has systematically opposed his government in recent years.
In early September, the leader of the 2017 secession attempt demanded from Belgium, where he settled to flee Spanish justice, the amnesty of pro-independence supporters with legal cases for their participation in the failed independence, in exchange for the support of his party.
Referendum
But in recent days, Junts and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), the other major separatist party, have raised the bar even higher and demanded that negotiations be opened to hold a referendum on self-determination.
In a resolution adopted on Friday in the Catalan regional parliament, the two parties urged the Catalan parties represented in the Spanish parliament "not to support an investiture of a future Spanish government that does not commit to working to make the conditions for holding the referendum effective".
With Carles Puigdemont at the helm, the Catalan regional government organised a referendum on self-determination on 1 October 2017, despite a court ban. The vote was followed shortly afterwards by a unilateral declaration of independence, which triggered Spain's worst political crisis in decades.
The central government, then led by the PP, dismissed the regional government and suspended the autonomy of this wealthy region of 7.8 million people. Pro-independence leaders then fled abroad, like Puigdemont, or were imprisoned.
Although they seemed willing to find a formula for amnesty, despite the disagreement shown by some barons and a part of their electorate, the socialists have assured that the organisation of a referendum is, however, a red line.
"No, there is no way around it. There never has been and there isn't", the leader of the Catalan socialists, Salvador Illa, who is very close to Pedro Sánchez, said on Cadena Ser radio on Friday.
"And if we have to go to elections again, then we will go to elections and let the citizens choose. But the path of division and rupture is a dead end," he added on Catalan radio station Rac 1.