The investiture of Pedro Sánchez is also played in a crucial decision: to facilitate that ERC and Junts manage to form their own parliamentary group in Congress, an aspiration that with a strict application of the rules of the Chamber they cannot achieve without external help because they do not meet the conditions themselves. Well, that help has begun to arrive.
The way that has been found is the transfer of deputies. Thus, Sumar will lend ERC to two of its own so that the Republicans can wield before the Bureau of Congress that now it does meet the conditions and that it has the right to get it. The justification that would be presented is that thanks to these two parliamentarians they would have 15% of the votes in all of Catalonia. Understanding the community as a set of the four circumscriptions where it has been presented.
Adding would lend exactly to its deputies for Girona and Tarragona to be able to reach that percentage of vote. Then, once the group is officially constituted, those same deputies will leave and rejoin the Plurinational Group of Sumar.
First of all, the key to everything is in article 23 of the rules of procedure of the Congress, which establishes the following. "The deputies, in number not less than 15, may constitute a Parliamentary Group. Deputies of one or more political formations who, even without meeting this minimum, have obtained a number of seats of not less than five and, at least, 15% of the votes corresponding to the constituencies in which they have presented candidacy or five percent of those cast in the nation as a whole may also be constituted as a Parliamentary Group.
Both ERC and Junts obtained seven deputies in the elections each, but they failed to overcome the 15% barrier in all Catalan provinces. The Republicans stayed at 12.3% in Barcelona and 14.7% in Girona. For its part, the formation of Puigdemont remained in 9.6% of the votes in Barcelona and 11% in Tarragona.