• Investiture Pedro Sánchez despises Congress by sending Óscar Puente to give the reply to Feijóo and dodges a debate on amnesty
  • Congreso Feijóo points against Sánchez and amnesty: "I will not do it because I have principles, limits and word" and calls Puente's speech a "comedy club"

"Lose all hope of breaking this PSOE," said Oscar Puente from the rostrum while Pedro Sánchez was already rehearsing the applause. The former mayor of Valladolid finished with a sentence: "Do not waste time looking for dissidents or traitors, none is representative of this PSOE." No traitor who disagrees with Sánchez or his project for the investiture is already worthy of the acronym, the spokesman said, while Sánchez himself warmed up to stand up. He finished doing so when Puente, whose intervention was unknown to the vast majority of the deputies of the socialist group, emphasized that the party was no longer theirs "but of its militants, of the people."

On behalf of the people, then, Óscar Puente spoke – "the deputy of Valladolid", insisted on calling him Feijóo throughout the afternoon – to complete the trip of the president and with him, that of the PSOE. That conversion of the party into a kind of oracle of the collective will comes from Sánchez and ends in Sánchez. It comes from the Sánchez of 2016, resigned or expelled from the general secretariat by the internal debate on his "no is no" against the investiture of Mariano Rajoy. And he arrives at the Sánchez of 2023, legitimized to agree with anyone to get his, elevated on the absolute absence of internal debate. And external.


ALBUM

Congress.

The protagonists of the investiture session

  • Writing: EL MUNDO

The protagonists of the investiture session

Sánchez did not even need to speak, but to speak for him, for the "militants" or for the "people", all the same already, according to the intervention of an Oscar Puente who seemed to respond to former Vice President Alfonso Guerra, who days ago predicted that the era of absence of internal debate in the PSOE will end soon. Nothing seems to indicate so for now. The PSOE "is no longer of its leaders, neither current nor historical".

But it will be Sánchez, not the "people", who will have to agree. And although he didn't speak yesterday, he did listen selectively. He attended with pinganillo to the interventions in Catalan of Gabriel Rufián (ERC) and Míriam Nogueras (Junts), enablers of his future investiture, but emptied his seat when Alberto Núñez Feijóo responded, to whom Sánchez made it clear with his attitude that it does not serve him at all. Always utilitarianism in the biography of the president.

The Sánchez who delivered his act of deputy so as not to have to obey the party in 2016 did so to be able to return later. Like the Sanchez who did not want to defend the amnesty yesterday, as Sumar did, he temporized to be able to defend it in the future, in more propitious circumstances. Tradition or parliamentary courtesy was in both cases an easy obstacle to overcome.

OPINION

Analysis.

Broken bridge over sewage

  • Writing: JORGE BUSTOS Madrid

Broken bridge over sewage

Investiture.

And Congress was stunned.

  • Writing: LUCÍA MÉNDEZ Madrid

And Congress was stunned.

The acting president already writes his own rules because he has surpassed all the milestones for which his party put foot on the wall in 2016 and recovered it a year later. The sentence yesterday of Puente, putting the party at the feet of Sánchez as militant in chief, sounded like the proclamation of the winner of the 2017 primaries with six years of delay and a new public. In the current PSOE described by Puente, the standing ovation of Vice President Nadia Calviño or Minister José Luis Escrivá, without a party card, is worth more than the serious or light reproach of the former presidents, former vice presidents and former ministers who have always had it, although they are no longer "representative".

Sánchez has changed the PSOE at the pace that he himself was evolving and was taking revenge for all the red lines that were once imposed on him. The no to Podemos culminated in the embrace with Pablo Iglesias before the January 2020 investiture. The cordon against Bildu was broken with the battering ram of a vaporous document on labor reform with the country focused on deconfinement. That tsunami is already remembered as an insignificant detail compared to the current solidity of its parliamentary alliance in Madrid, not yet in the Basque Country.

The Socialists, who focused their response to Feijóo on presenting him as an unauthorized leader within the party, did not need a word from their general secretary to project the image of an obedient army with interchangeable parts. From deputy 1 to 121, the voice of the PSOE speaks for Sánchez and protects Sánchez, the "militant", the "people".

  • PSOE
  • Pedro Sanchez
  • Congress of Deputies
  • Investiture of the President
  • Alberto Núñez Feijóo
  • PP
  • Articles Miguel Riaño