PP and C’s reach agreement paving the way for a new Rajoy government

Barcelona (CNA).- The conservative People’s Party (PP) and the liberal Ciutadans sealed on Sunday an agreement that they hope will gain enough votes in the Spanish Congress to allow Mariano Rajoy to be appointed as Spanish president. The deal comes after a week of intense negotiations between the two parties and could put an end to an eight-month deadlock in Spain, which has been without a functioning government since December 2015. PP and C’s have agreed on a 150-point plan that includes economic, social and institutional measures. Amongst them, a controversial commitment to introduce a trilingual model in schools that would de facto suspend the current Catalan immersion system and frontal opposition to any kind of independence referendum. 

The main opposition party in Spain, the PSOE, has refused to back any Rajoy-led government, not even by abstaining in a second vote, and so has Podemos. The Catalan pro-independence parties, liberal PDC and left-wing ERC, won’t support a conservative government that does not recognise the possibility of a referendum in Catalonia and that they see as a threat to the current school model in the country. The PP only needs 11 abstention votes to succeed in a second vote. The vote will be held on Wednesday, with a second one on Friday if the first ballot fails.

The PP and C’s have agreed on a 150-point plan that includes economic, social and institutional measures. Amongst them, a controversial commitment to introduce a trilingual model in schools that would de facto suspend the current Catalan immersion system. In Catalan schools, Catalan is the language of instruction in order to guarantee that all pupils end their studies knowing both Catalan, which not everyone learns at home, and Spanish, which is widely used both in the media and on the street. However, C’s has always campaigned against this system, saying that it discriminates against Spanish families that want their children to be taught in the Spanish language. They propose, instead, a trilingual model according to which pupils will be taught in English, Spanish and Catalan.

The leader of Ciutadans, Albert Rivera, urged the other political parties in the Spanish Congress to vote in favour of the agreement in the debate next week. “Do not abstain from Spain, do not ignore what is going on in Spain”, he said during a press conference with the leader of the PP and current Spanish president, Mariano Rajoy.

Rivera said that 100 of the 150 measures agreed with the PP are the same as those that C’s agreed with the Socialists when they sealed a similar deal to form a government last winter. Back then, PSOE candidate Pedro Sánchez, with the support of C’s, was defeated in Congress.

Rajoy said the agreement is “positive” and urged the PSOE to allow him to lead a new government. The current Spanish President is going to meet the leader of the opposition, Pedro Sánchez, on Monday. “I will tell them what I’ve told him since December, but now with the support of 170 MPs”, he stated.