After hearing the political groups with parliamentary representation that have decided to resort to the mandatory consultations with the King and in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, the monarch has transferred to the president of Congress his candidate proposal and, sticking to tradition, although it is not written anywhere that this should be the case, he has proposed as a candidate for the presidency the winner of the elections, the popular Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who had conveyed in said consultations his predisposition to submit to the investiture.
Much had been speculated about the King’s role, given that the election result generates many uncertainties regarding a successful investiture. His decision has not surprised. More than the “custom” to which the King has accepted in the absence of an alternative majority, the most significant thing is that, At the moment, Núñez Feijóo is the candidate with the most confirmed support. Those of his group, those of Vox, UPN and CC, and that is how their representatives have transferred it to the head of state. It does not seem, however, that he is in a position to gather the necessary support to achieve the investiture, since the only group that he could eventually count on to build a majority, as has happened in the past, the PNV, has rejected any possibility of understanding. For this reason, and given this impossible arithmetic, there was the possibility that the King proposed as a candidate the President of the Government in office, Pedro Sanchez, whose party, despite having come in second in the elections, could achieve a majority, as was demonstrated in the election for the presidency of Congress. However, that eventual majority is only a possibility and the King has not been able to find out first-hand what was the opinion of some of the groups that eventually could support Sánchez since neither CKDneither togetherneither him BNG neither bildumaking an ostentatious abandonment of functions, they have gone to the consultations so that those still hypothetical supports could not be asserted to decant the proposal.
The King has acted in accordance with the provisions of the constitutional mandate, proposing the candidate who currently has the most support, even though his chances of being elected are remote. His proposal has not yet activated the legal deadlines, which will not begin to run until the date of the investiture session is set, which Núñez Feijóo does not see immediately. But once the proposal is made a blocking situation is already unfeasible like the one experienced in 2015 when Mariano Rajoy, winner of the elections, resigned from the investiture and as a consequence of this the candidate proposal was lengthened, until reaching the repetition of the elections that allowed the paralysis to be overcome. Thus, an unaffordable blockade begins to be averted and the start-up of political negotiations is encouraged that they may lead to an investiture, although this is by no means guaranteed since the conditions posed by some of the necessary groups such as Junts per Catalunya and ERC are difficult to assume in their maximum version for the PSOE. For this reason, even in the event that these talks do not prosper and while we wait for the date of the investiture debate to be decided, there is already a certainty, until today not clear, that the possible repetition of the elections would take place before the Christmas.