BarcelonaThe judicial investigation is increasingly tightening the siege on former minister <a href="https://www.archysport.com/2023/11/pere-aragones-signs-pere-macias-for-the-transfer-of-rodalies-agreed-with-the-psoe/" title="Pere Aragonès signs Pere Macias for the transfer of Rodalies agreed with the PSOE“>José Luis Ábalos in the plot of alleged corruption that affected the Spanish government during the pandemic. The PP has seen it as the dreamed-of opportunity to deliver the coup de grace to Pedro Sánchez‘s executive and for days it has been storming out against the PSOE, generating anticipation at every call. The noise of a motion of censure accompanies all these movements, the latest this Sunday with an urgent call from the popular president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who has summoned the leaders to discuss the Koldo case. Popular sources rule out that the motion of censure is the short-term plan, but no one rules out that it can be explored. The problem? To unseat Sánchez de la Moncloa, the PP would need the support of Vox and Junts or the PNB and also the Canarian Coalition. A movement complicated by the presence of the extreme right in the equation, but also because the political strategy of the popular is based on charging against the PSOE’s agreements with Catalan independence. Vox, by the way, will also use this Sunday to announce the “legal actions” it says it will take after learning the latest information about the Koldo case.
The general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, will appear this Sunday to explain the decisions of the popular leadership, which this Saturday during the celebration of Hispanic Day, criticized even the presence of Sánchez in the events. What do the popular people cling to? The strategy has intensified after the report of the Civil Guard is known which attributes a “relevant role” in the alleged corruption plot to José Luis Ábalos, who until 2021 was Sánchez’s most trusted person within the executive as Minister of Development and the PSOE as secretary of organization. Although the Spanish president has tried to disassociate himself by promising that “there will be no impunity”, those of Feijóo are taking advantage of the agreement to try to extrapolate from this case a systemic corruption comparable to the Gürtel case, which brought down the government of the popular Mariano Rajoy with a motion of censure promoted by Sánchez himself.
So, according to the PP itself in a statement to the media, “the seriousness of the situation” is what is making them move, as well as the “blatant lies” of the state president about the arrival of the Venezuelan vice president, Delcy Rodríguez . In this sense, they put the key figure of Nicolás Maduro’s government in an alleged corrupt network of “the sale of gold bars with the closest circle of the secretary of the organization of the socialists”, referring to Ábalos. They even try to bring to the political arena the image of “businessmen carrying money in bags to the headquarters of the PSOE”, a situation similar to the envelopes that the PP starred in the box B of the convicted Luis Bárcenas. To finish seasoning the climate of systemic corruption in Moncloa, the popular do not forget the judicial investigation into the wife of the president of the Spanish government.
Is the motion possible?
That Feijóo considers the motion of censure as a strategy to bring down Sánchez or to put fear in his body is not new. He already did it before the European elections, when he opened the door to this scenario if the popular people won the elections. Then on other occasions he has been disappointed saying that it is a tool right now “unfeasible” because “four votes” are missing. So, he should try to count on the support of a key party for the arithmetic: Junts. A scenario, however, that the PSOE is beginning to foresee: ex-leaders like Odón Elorza speculate through X that Feijóo would like to call a motion of censure just before the congress of the socialists.
In any case, will the PP be open to negotiating with the members to achieve their goal? Those of Carles Puigdemont do not want to be identified with either the right-wing or the Spanish left-wing bloc, but they invested Sánchez and have always put national advances for Catalonia on the table, such as the transfer of immigration and the economic concert, in addition to the negotiations with an international mediator, which the PP is not ready to accept. The scenario is not favorable either, since the amnesty law has not yet been fully applied to those retaliated by the Process and because the alliance would depend on the extreme right of Vox. Among the popular people, there is no consensus on even being able to talk with Junts to reach agreements, with Catalan Alejandro Fernández or Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo showing frontal opposition.
