The amnesty marks the investiture debate that begins today, from which Sánchez will be elected president for the third time

He goes to Congress with a majority of 179 votes after closing agreements with all the nationalist and independence groups in the Chamber

MADRID, 14 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, faces the first day of the investiture session this Wednesday to achieve his re-election. It would be the third time that he has been named President of the Government, this time after closing a majority of 179 deputies, including all the nationalist and independence groups in the Chamber.

Sánchez will ask for the confidence of the deputies in a session that will begin at 12 noon in the Chamber of the Lower House, once he has sealed a coalition government agreement with Sumar and after seeking the support of ERC, Junts, Bildu, PNV , BNG and Canarian Coalition, a total of 179 deputies, three above the absolute majority required.

As expected, only the first vote will be necessary and therefore, he will be elected president at the end of the second day of the debate, that is, on Thursday, November 16, in the afternoon. The PSOE's accounts involve achieving those 179 'yeses' compared to the 171 'noes' of PP, Vox and UPN, without any abstention.

If an absolute majority is not achieved, the vote would have to be repeated 48 hours after the first, but in that case only a simple majority would be necessary. If he is finally elected, it would be the first time in democracy that a candidate is president of the Government despite the fact that his party did not come in first place in the elections.

Of all the pacts that he has had to seal with the different parties to obtain their favorable votes, the one that has received the most reproaches from the opposition and the one that will have the most echo in his interventions this Wednesday is the amnesty law that will benefit about 300 involved in the process, including the main separatist leaders.

Last week, the PSOE managed to unravel the agreement with Junts, after the Secretary of Organization of the Socialists, Santos Cerdán, had to spend five days negotiating in Brussels, where the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who has fled from Spanish justice since, resides. six years ago and one of the main beneficiaries of the grace measure.

The investiture session is being held amid strong security measures - more than 1,300 police officers will be deployed around Congress - due to the protests against the amnesty and the pacts with the pro-independence forces that have been repeated in several Spanish cities since more than 10 days ago.

In any case, if everything goes as planned, this Thursday Sánchez will be elected president for the third time, five years after arriving at La Moncloa for the first time after carrying out the motion of censure against former president Mariano Rajoy in 2018. Later, he won the elections in 2019 and added the votes of Unidas Podemos in exchange for including them in a coalition government.

The first time that Sánchez ran for an investiture was in March 2016, but he was unable to carry it out because he only had the 131 seats he had together with Ciudadanos, then chaired by Albert Rivera, and the Canary Coalition.

That same year, the leader of the PSOE was evicted from the general secretary of his party in a Federal Committee that generated a deep internal crisis, between those in favor of allowing a PP Government and those, like Sánchez, who were opposed and asked for a new electoral call. shouting 'no means no'.

Against all odds, Sánchez won the PSOE primaries the following year, regaining the general secretary and leadership of the opposition. And from there he made the leap to La Moncloa by leading a motion of censure against the then head of the Executive, Mariano Rajoy (PP), thanks to the support of the PNV, which withdrew its support for the 'popular' and tipped the balance on the side. socialist.

That first stage lasted approximately one year, until Sánchez called elections for April 2019, due to the impossibility of carrying out the General State Budgets due to lack of support. Sánchez's PSOE was the party with the most votes and ran again for the investiture, but did not obtain the necessary votes either, after the attempt to reach an agreement with Pablo Iglesias' Podemos failed. Sánchez only achieved the 'yes' of the 123 deputies of the PSOE and the only deputy of the Regionalist Party of Cantabria (PRC).

Due to the lack of a sufficient majority, the polls were called again in November 2019. PSOE and Unidas Podemos lost seats but this time they did reach an agreement for a coalition and Pedro Sánchez was elected president thanks to the abstention of ERC and Bildu. He achieved 167 votes in favor, 165 against and 18 abstentions.

Now he is running for office with a larger majority in exchange for concessions to all the groups that support him and with a very complicated legislative panorama. Sánchez has expressed on numerous occasions his intention to complete the legislature but will need the support of all the investiture partners, who cover a wide ideological spectrum, to give the green light to each vote.