With Alberto Núñez Feijóo shouting in the corridors of Congress that the “situation is one of political agony” just minutes after it was revealed that the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard (UCO) had entered the Ferraz headquarters and again appealing to partners to break away, but without making a move for a motion of no confidence, the leader of the PP received a response from the Chamber where he controls the parliamentary agenda thanks to his absolute majority: the Senate. There, on Wednesday, a motion proposed by his party was debated to censure the Government and demand that it “put an end to the current deadlock by allowing the formation of a new Government.” Génova registered the text a day after the indictment of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero by the National Court was revealed and had sold it as a way for the partners to “distance themselves” from La Moncloa ex profeso. The parties that have the power to bring down Pedro Sánchez, PNV and Junts, abstained in the vote. Before pressing the vote button, their spokespeople held a conversation in the seat. All three days after Aitor Esteban, head of the PNV, demanded elections from Sánchez before the end of the year.
“Judge Calama’s order is clear. Today we censure this Government for its structural corruption. Spain demands elections!”, began María José Pardo, PP senator, the debate marked by the UCO’s entry into Ferraz. And in a session that ended very heated: from the PSOE bench someone shouted “fascist” at the ultra senator Ángel Pelayo while he attacked the PSOE and Zapatero from the podium over the judicial investigations. Then the PP deputy spokesman, Javier Arenas, asked for the floor to defend Pelayo. “Wherever it comes from, we will never support a disqualification of a senator by calling him a fascist, never.” The motion of censure against the Government was finally approved with the yes votes of PP, Vox, UPN, and Canary Coalition.
The PNV spokesperson in the Senate, Estefanía Beltrán de Heredia, was the only one to speak from the seat. And she did so, before abstaining, to send several messages to the PP. “You wanted to present [this motion] as a pseudo-motion of censure against the Government,” she pointed out. “Enough of these media circuses!”, censured the parliamentarian, energetically. “If you consider that the circumstances exist to present a motion of censure, do it now, and do it where you have to, in the Congress of Deputies. The rest are nonsense, they are distractions, it’s entertaining and making noise,” Beltrán de Heredia hammered, unleashing murmurs among the popular bench.
Read more WHO calls for a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to stop the Ebola outbreak
So far, although the PNV calls for elections, it has also reiterated that it will not be part of a coalition that includes Vox, as would have to happen for a possible motion of censure to succeed. The relationship with the PP, however, has also deteriorated greatly during this legislature. “Your record on corruption with more than 200 prosecuted cases that certainly would be enough to wallpaper this entire plenary hall,” Esteban de Heredia spat at the popular members, to whom she also reproached “the stable partnership you have formed with Vox.”
After the debate, the PNV senator spoke from the seat with the Junts spokesperson, Eduard Pujol, who took the floor during the debate, firing at former president Salvador Illa, the Government, and the PP. “If Sánchez holds on so long it’s not because of Junts, who days ago already stood up to a socialism incapable of transforming the State,” Pujol launched at the Popular Party senators. “The problem is yourselves and the bad habit of never knowing how to stop neither against Catalonia nor against the most basic things of a democracy… such as putting ballot boxes,” added the Catalan parliamentarian.