Sánchez's allies resist Feijóo's invitation to switch sides.

Miguel Tellado, the PP spokesperson in Congress, yesterday surveyed almost all of Pedro Sánchez's investiture allies to find out if they remain on the same side. And the answer is, for now, yes.

For various reasons, no one is willing to join the new majority led by the Popular Party, which is four votes short of a vote of no confidence.

Tellado canvassed all the parties—some with a phone call, others with a text message—with the exception of Bildu. The most significant response came from the two conservative parties currently aligned with Pedro Sánchez: Junts and the Basque Nationalist Party.

Vox is the only party that would support Feijóo, whom Ayuso recommends not taking "false steps."

Junts responded to the PP that if they wanted to address the issue, they should travel to Waterloo and visit the party's president, Carles Puigdemont. The PP ruled out that meeting. "We're not going to do what we've criticized others for doing; we're not like the PSOE," the PP leader concluded. Thus, any rapprochement was forgotten. For now.

The PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) was also willing to listen, they explained, out of mere institutional courtesy to the PP spokesperson, until Tellado spoke to the media at a press conference in Congress before speaking to them.

It was a mistake. “The PP, which claims to be the leader of the opposition and wants to lead an alternative government, is shirking responsibility for achieving a hypothetical majority. It doesn't explain how it wants to be that way or how it wants to gain the support of other groups.” For the PNV, the PP “isn't seeking what they claim to be seeking. It's all window dressing.” Things ended so badly that Tellado called the nationalist spokesperson again that afternoon to ease the tension.

Read also

It all began early this morning, when Alberto Núñez Feijóo announced that he had asked Miguel Tellado to speak with the government's partners to find out if their support for the PSOE remained intact after Santos Cerdán's first night in prison, since, as he tweeted, "they are the only obstacle preventing Spaniards from speaking out."

However, at midday, the PP spokesperson had to clarify that this only meant they would listen to opinions and that it was in no way the start of negotiations for the presentation of a motion of no confidence. By mid-morning, Isabel Díaz Ayuso had already warned Feijóo not to take any false steps.

In any case, the other allies in the investiture election weren't willing to budge. While waiting to find out whether the multiple ramifications of the Koldo case will end up "escalating" within the PSOE or the government, Gabriel Rufián declared that "it should be the people who decide the future of the country, and not a party—the PP—that has had, has, and will have corruption cases." Podemos's slamming of the door, though obvious, was nonetheless eloquent. Despite having spent weeks harshly attacking Pedro Sánchez, asserting that the current PSOE is "the same" as the GAL (Spanish Workers' Party), the Filesa case, and the EREs (Law and Order of the Workers' Party) in Andalusia, its spokesperson Ione Belarra blew up any avenue of understanding with the PP, saying it "has nothing to discuss with the most corrupt party in Europe." The BNG (National Left) was even more concise. It rejected any initiative "promoted by the far right and the ultra-right," in clear reference to Vox's inevitable support for a PP vote of no confidence. And the Canary Islands Coalition asked to wait until Sánchez's appearance on July 9.

In this context, despite the PP spokesperson's reference to the "silence of the lambs" in the face of Sánchez's "outrages" and contrasting it with the "dignity" of "historical socialists" such as Felipe González, Alfonso Guerra, and Javier Lambán, who have distanced themselves from the president, the PP failed to attract anyone other than Vox, which reiterated that it would support the motion it has been demanding as long as it does not include "concessions to separatism."