Current PP Minister, Ana Pastor, new President of Spanish Parliament

Barcelona (CNA).- The Spanish Parliament’s Bureau of the XII Legislature, which emerged from the Spanish elections of the 26th of June, will be presided over by Conservative People’s Party (PP) MP and Former Spanish Minister for Public Works, Ana Pastor, who held this title for the last term of office. Pastor, who was elected in the second round, obtained the support of PP and Spanish Unionist ‘Ciutadans’, and got 169 votes out of the 350-seats in the Spanish Parliament. Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and Alternative left coalition ‘Unidos Podemos’ opted for PSOE’s Patxi López, who presided the Spanish Parliament for the last seven months. He obtained 155 votes. Pro-independence parties in the Chamber, liberal CDC and left wing pro-independence ERC emitted a blank vote, the same as the rest of the forces in the Spanish Parliament. Pastor is usually seen as the face of the lack of investment in many public infrastructures in Catalonia, such the Spanish train operator, RENFE, a network which has repeatedly collapsed.

“I’ll be the president of all”, stated Pastor on her first speech and called for “dialogue, consensus and stability” in this term of office. Former Spanish Minister for Public Works stated that she “won’t let down the Spaniards’ expectations”.

Besides holding the presidency of the Spanish Parliament, current governing PP, who obtained 137 MPs in the 350-seat Spanish Chamber on the 26th of June elections,will be the party with the most representatives in the Spanish Parliament’s Bureau. Thus, three of the nine members in this body will be PP’s; Former Spanish Minister for Public Works, Ana Pastor, Alicia Sánchez Camacho, leader of the PP in Catalonia and Rosa Romero. Adding ‘Ciutadans’s representatives in the body, this two forces will have an absolute majority in the Bureau.  ‘Ciutadans’ MP Ignacio Prendes has been named vice-president of the chamber, PSOE’s Micaela Navarro was designated as second vice-president and ‘Unidos Podemos’, Gloria Elizo, has been named third vice-president.

None of the other parties in the Spanish Chamber are represented in the Bureau. Moreover, it is still unclear if CDC, which obtained 9 seats in the Spanish Parliament, will have its own parliamentary group.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Pio García-Escudero was elected President for the third time since 2011, obtaining the support of 151 out of the 264-seats in the Chamber. PP has an absolute majority in the Senate as well, which allows them to keep the presidency of the Chamber. 

Catalan Government: The election of Pastor “doesn’t imply anything”

Catalan Government spokeswoman, Neus Munté, warned that the agreements reached this Tuesday to constitute the Spanish Parliament’s Bureau don’t guarantee the “stability” of the recently started term of office. According to Munté, the election of Pastor “doesn’t imply anything”, on the contrary, is a “formality” which may lead to another unsuccessful attempt to form a new government in Madrid. “We’ll have to wait to see whether the term of office actually starts or is unstable from birth”.

Regarding the position of pro-independence parties ERC and CDC, which could have avoided that Pastor was elected by voting PSOE’s candidate, Patxi López, rather than abstaining, Munté assured that the Catalan executive “doesn’t have an official position” on which candidate is “more convenient” for Catalonia. However, she expected for Pastor to "comply more as President of the Parliament that what she did as Minister for Public Works”.