Parliament To Convene With No Clear Path To New Speaker, Let Alone PM

The new parliamentary session in Spain gets underway on 17 August, with the 350-member Congress of Deputies meeting for the first time since the May general election. The first task for the new parliament will be to elect a new speaker as well as four deputies and four secretaries. The speaker's election could give a sign of how easy or difficult it will be to hold a successful investiture vote for a prime minister in the future.

• The parliamentary arithmetic could not be tighter.
• The right-wing bloc of the conservative Popular Party (PP), right-wing nationalist Vox, and regionalist Navarrese Popular Union (UPN) hold 171 seats.
• The leftist/regionalist bloc of PM Pedro Sanchez's Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), far-left Sumar, centrist Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), Basque separatist EH Bildu, regionalist Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and leftist Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) hold 171 seats.
• This makes the decisions of the single member from the regional-interest Canarian Coalition (CC), and the hard-line pro-Catalan independence Together for Catalonia (Junts) with seven deputies crucial.
• In order to win, a speaker (or prime ministerial) candidate needs an absolute majority in the first round (176) or a simple majority in the second.
• Junts have stated they will not support the PP due to Vox's inclusion, but their demands on the PSOE (amnesty for exiled leader Carles Puigdemont to return, a legal referendum on self-determination) could prove too high a price for Sanchez to pay.