The Congress of Deputies welcomes this Tuesday the sixth motion of censure since the recovery of democracy. The independent Ramón Tamames, former leader of the PCE, aspires to be elected the new president of the Spanish government if the majority of the chamber supports him, a fact that is unlikely to happen.
At nine in the morning, the Congress session will begin, with the intervention of the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, in charge of defending the motion. Abascal will intervene without a time limit.
Then it will be the turn of the alternative candidate. Tamames, 89 years old, will speak from the seat usually occupied by Abascal and will not go up to the podium of the Congress because of the mobility problems he has.
The veteran economist, who will also intervene without a time limit, will make a diagnosis of the country’s situation and present a government program with a single point: the dissolution of the Courts and the calling of general elections coinciding with the municipal and autonomous ones of May 28.
Technically, the president of the executive can intervene at any time. But the tradition is for him to be the third to intervene, after the candidate’s speech.
Once Pedro Sánchez has spoken, the round of replies and counter-replies will begin, as many as you want. When he finishes, the president of the chamber, Meritxell Batet, will order a recess.
The session will resume at four in the afternoon with the interventions of the parliamentary groups, from small to large, with 30 minutes per group. The Mixed Group will begin and both the Prime Minister and the candidate to replace him can ask for the floor at any time.
Wednesday will be the turn of the rest of the parliamentary groups. Finally, voting will be done by call and out loud, based on a letter chosen at random.
Without the necessary votes for the motion to succeed
To move forward, the censure motion needs an absolute majority of deputies to vote in favor of it. Under normal conditions, there are 176 deputies, but in this case, there are 175 because the seat of the deputy of Unides Podemos Alberto Rodríguez has not been replaced since he was removed from the record.
The PP, the second largest group in Congress, will abstain, unlike what it did in 2020, with Pablo Casado at the helm when it voted against it. Therefore, two and a half years later, the calculations indicate that the motion will again get only 52 votes in favor.
In the event that Tamames obtains the support of 175 deputies, the president of Congress must immediately inform King Felipe VI and the head of government, who must submit his resignation to the monarch within 24 hours.
If the motion of censure goes ahead, it is understood that the candidate obtains the confidence of the chamber and the king must appoint him president of the government.
With five motions of censure, only one has succeeded
It is the second motions of censure that Vox presents against Pedro Sánchez in this legislature. The previous one, in October 2020, with Santiago Abascal as a candidate, did not succeed.
So far, the only one that has succeeded is the one presented in 2018 by the current president of the Spanish government against Mariano Rajoy. A year earlier, Unides Podemos had presented another, with Pablo Iglesias as a candidate, which did not go ahead.
Previously, Felipe González presented one against Adolfo Suárez in 1980, and Antonio Hernández Mancha, of Aliança Popular, one against González in 1987.