• Live Feijóo investiture debate, live
  • Congress Feijóo loses the first investiture vote but consolidates its leadership as a scourge of Sánchez

-Sánchez Íñiguez, Herminio Rufino

+Yes

Bewilderment reigned for a few seconds in the Congress of Deputies when the second secretary of the Table, the socialist Isaura Leal, called to vote for her partner for Teruel and he voted yes to the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

After Herminio Rufino Sancho's resounding "yes", Leal automatically pronounced a "no" to count his vote before the error hit him. "Excuse me?" asked the secretary, before a hurried Sancho, who stood up to try to mend his mistake while at his side laughed the Sevillian Francisco Salazar and the Galician José Ramón Gómez Besteiro.

The deputy tried to explain that Leal had made a mistake when reading his last name, to which the secretary of the Bureau grabbed to call him back to vote. "Excuse me please, I have mispronounced your last name," Leal excused himself to the laughter of the benches, before summoning him again: "Sancho Iñiguez, Herminio Rufino." And now yes: "No", and a gesture of relief in the deputy who was about to be the protagonist.

"Sancho yes... no, like I'm Sancho, not Sanchez. I said Sancho yes, of course...", he tried, unsuccessfully, to explain later to journalists about his confusion.

Mayor of the small Teruel municipality of Mezquita de Jarque since 2007, Herminio Sancho made headlines for his activity: he combines his local baton with his position as a deputy and with the exploitation of a livestock with more than 1,000 sheep.

In his profile on the Congress website he describes himself as a "farmer and rancher" and landed in the House after the general elections of April 2019. He repeated in November of that year and again in the 23-J, shortly after revalidating the mayoralty almost to the Bulgarian: he obtained 46 of the 62 votes cast and the three councilors of the small town hall.

It was not so successful in the generals, where the PSOE was left with only 30 votes, and the lost 'sanchistas' were divided between Teruel Hay (8), Vox (4), the Frente Obrero (1) and Sumar (1).

  • Teruel
  • PSOE
  • Alberto Núñez Feijóo
  • Congress of Deputies
  • Articles Miguel Riaño