Spain's Socialists candidate speaker wins key vote backed by Catalans
3 Min Read
Francina Armengol was elected speaker after receiving 178 votes in the 350-seat legislature.
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Newly-elected Speaker of the Parliament, Francina Armengol, applauded during a voting session at the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, on Aug. 17, 2023. (AFP)
On Thursday, the candidate of Spain's Socialists was appointed as speaker for the lower house of Congress with support from Catalan parties, in acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's first move toward creating a new government.
After a shaky election in July, Thursday's vote on a speaker may be considered as a gauge for the relative strength of the left and right blocs while discussions to form a government continue.
Read more: Spain's right-wing PP wins elections, falls short of outright majority
Francina Armengol was elected speaker after receiving 178 votes in the 350-seat legislature. The conservative People's Party (PP) candidate received just 137 votes, while the far-right Vox, which is in coalition with the PP in several Spanish regions, voted for its own candidate, Ignacio Gil, rather than the PP's.
The vote came with much bargaining and agreements on concessions in exchange for backing.
In July's election, the PP, led by Alberto Nunez Feijoo, gained more seats than the Socialists (PSOE) but failed to achieve an absolute majority and now faces an uphill fight to assemble enough support to form a government, likely relying on Vox.
The PSOE won the second-most seats and will try to build a government with the help of its far-left partner Sumar and a patchwork of minor parties, including Esquerra Republicana (ERC) and Together for Catalonia (Junts).
Armengol was the Catalan-speaking Balearic Islands region's leader from 2015 until June 2023, leading in coalition with the hard-left Podemos and a sister party of the ERC.
The ERC stated that in exchange for its support, it had received concessions from the Socialists, including a commitment to use Catalan as an official language in Spanish legal and parliamentary institutions.
The PSOE also agreed to form an investigative committee into the hacking of Catalan separatist leader's phones by Israeli spyware NSO group and promised to put "an end to repression" from Spanish courts against separatists involved in the failed 2017 attempt to split Catalonia from Spain.
According to the official broadcaster TVE, the more hardcore separatist group Junts has also agreed to endorse Armengol in principle.
Junts has not disclosed what concessions it received, but its conditions for supporting Sanchez in an investiture vote are permission to hold a new independence referendum in Catalonia and amnesty for all separatists facing legal charges related to the independence bid, including leader Carles Puigdemont, whom Spanish authorities are seeking to have extradited from Belgium.
Sanchez, first elected in 2018, has ruled in a minor coalition with the far-left Podemos party that subsequently merged with other groups into Sumar.
