translated from Spanish: And now what: Pedro Sánchez’s investiture in Spain failed for the second time?

The investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president of the Spanish government failed on Thursday by abstaining the formation of the United Podemos leftwing, which prevented the Spanish socialist leader from reaching a majority in the second and last vote in Congress.
Sánchez won 124 votes in favour (those of the Socialist bench and that of the deputy of the Cantabrian Regionalist Party), against 155 negatives (People’s Party, Citizens, Vox, Junts Per Catalunya, Coalition Canarias and Navarra Suma) and 67 abstentions of Podemos.
Sanchez’s failure means that his candidacy for the head of government is deactivated, and the president of the Congress, Meritxell Batet, must inform in the coming hours to King Felipe that the endowment failed.
A two-month period is now initiated to determine if there may be another candidacy or new elections.
From there, the king has to decide whether to convene a new round of consultations at this time or give the parties time to know later whether there are options to again propose a candidacy for the investiture.
This second option is the one that seems most likely considering historical history.
According to article 99 of the Constitution, the period for attempting another investiture is two months since last Tuesday’s failed vote.
The deadline is therefore 23 September, and if an investiture had not been possible on that date, new legislative elections would be called a day later, to be held on 10 November.
Spain already experienced a similar situation three years ago, when a victory came out of the December 2015 elections by the conservative Partido Popular (PP), but without a majority.
Pedro Sánchez closed a government pact with the liberal Ciudadanos, but he found the rejection of the Popular Party and Podemos.
After several months of uncertainty, in June 2016 there was a repetition of the elections that gave the victory to the PP and allowed to remain in power to their then leader, Mariano Rajoy.
Today’s failure makes Pedro Sánchez the first candidate for the presidency of the Government since 1978 with two failed endowments to his credit and, on both occasions, it was with the opposing vote of United Podemos, the party to the left of the PSOE.
Sanchez came to power in June last year after reaching another milestone: succeeding in the first successful motion in recent Spanish democracy, which dislodged Rajoy from power, and for which he did have the support of Podemos and other nationalist and regionalist parties.

Original source in Spanish

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