Spanish parliament prepares to vote on conservative party leader’s bid to become prime minister – Europe live

As expected, socialist MP Óscar Puente did not mince his words – or as the Spanish idiom has it, there are no hairs on his tongue.

“Mr Feijóo, you entered this chamber as leader of the opposition, and as the newspapers have it, you’ll leave it having become the leader of the opposition. But you’re not just that. You’re the leader of the opposition and a scourge! A scourge of who? Sánchez- who else could it be – the font of all evil!”

Puente told Feijóo he has had a month to change the focus of Spanish politics – “but you’ve squandered it”.

He also accused the PP of using King Felipe – who gave his blessing to Feijóo’s attempt to become PM – for his own political ends.

The accusation does not go down well with the PP.

It’s now the PSOE’s turn and, as in first debate, the party has chosen the MP Óscar Puente to respond to Feijóo.

Puente, who served as the mayor of the city of Valladolid until he was ousted by a Vox/PP coalition despite finishing first in May’s municipal elections, pulled no punches in his last speech.

“Mr Feijóo, neither you nor I won the elections,” he told the PP leader.

“Look, in a parliamentary democracy, leading the party that wins the most votes doesn’t mean you won the election. In a parliamentary democracy, the one who wins is the one who can put together a government.”

Feijóo is wrapping up his speech, which was merely 10 minutes today – much shorter than Tuesday’s speech, which was 40 pages long.

He got a standing ovation from the PP benches.

In his speech, Feijóo implicitly acknowledged that his attempt to become Spain’s next prime minister had failed, saying that he and his party were prepared to offer an opposition “that represents all Spaniards”.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, as expected, is trying to use the possible amnesty to make Pedro Sánchez squirm. In his address, he has just said: “An amnesty – yes or no? I say no. And you, Mr Sánchez?”

As he did at Sunday’s big rally in Madrid, Feijóo has once again accused Sánchez of “moral and political degradation” by entertaining the idea of an amnesty.

As mentioned in our earlier news story, the two main pro-independence Catalan parties, Junts and the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) are seeking to extract maximum gains in return for helping Pedro Sánchez and the socialists back into office.

Junts’s leader, the self-exiled former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont, has said there must be an amnesty for all those, like him, who are wanted by Spanish courts over their roles in the failed push for independence seven years ago.

But yesterday, Junts and the ERC ramped up the pressure still further, saying they would only back a Spanish government that laid the ground for a referendum on regional independence.

This is a red line for the PSOE, which indirectly said as much last night.

Salvador Illa, the former Spanish health minister who now leads the Catalan branch of the socialist party (PSC) has said there will be no negotiations “outside the constitution”, adding that the socialists are happy to fight another general election rather than cave to Junts and the ERC’s demands.

On Friday morning, he told the Catalan radio station RAC1:

“If we have to go to an election, we’ll go to an election and the people will decide.”

If, as expected, Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s bid fails today, the socialist leader and Spain’s acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, will then seek the king’s permission to attempt to form a government.

It will not be an easy task – not least in the court of public opinion.

While Sánchez can count on votes from his own party, from its partners in the leftwing Sumar alliance and from a handful of Basque and Catalan nationalist parties, he will also need to enlist the support of Junts, the hardline Catalan separatist party led by Carles Puigdemont.

The problem for Sánchez is that Puigdemont, who fled Spain to avoid arrest over his role in the unilateral and unlawful push for independence six years ago, has insisted his support will be conditional on the granting of amnesty to him and hundreds of others involved in the attempted secession.

Sánchez’s refusal to rule out such amnesty has proved deeply controversial.

On Thursday, Junts and the more moderate Catalan Republican Left [ERC] party attempted to ramp up the pressure on the PSOE still further, saying they would not support a central government that did not “undertake to work to bring about the conditions for the holding of a referendum [on regional independence]”.

The socialists, however, have repeatedly ruled out such a referendum and reminded Junts and the ERC of their position in a statement on Thursday evening.

“Dialogue must serve as a means to overcome division and not as a means to deepen the rupture and the discord that has generated so much tension in Catalonia and in the rest of Spain,” the PSOE said in the joint communiqué with its Catalan branch.

“There is no possible progress down that path. The path [to take] is that of coexistence and cohesion, of understanding, and of the social and economic progress of Catalonia and the rest of Spain – always within the bounds of the constitution.”

The amnesty issue has helped Feijóo recover his standing in his party and stave off possible leadership challenges amid internal disappointment over the July result.

Read the full story here.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP), will conclude his all but doomed attempt to win power today when he once again asks MPs to back him as the next prime minister despite lacking the necessary votes in congress.

Although the PP finished first in July’s snap general election, it failed to win enough votes to form a government, taking 137 seats in Spain’s 350-seat congress, and scored a far less emphatic win over the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers party (PSOE) than had been expected.

Despite knowing he did not have the numbers to reach the absolute majority threshold of 176 seats – even with the support of the far-right Vox party and two smaller groupings – Feijóo received King Felipe’s blessing to attempt an investiture this week.

As predicted, he lost the first vote on Wednesday by 172 votes to 178, falling four votes short of the absolute majority he needed. Today’s vote, which requires only a simple majority – more yes votes than no votes – seems equally unlikely to put Feijóo in the Moncloa Palace.

If, as expected, Feijóo’s bid fails, the socialist leader and acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, will then seek the king’s permission to attempt to form a government.

Read the full story here.

Good morning and welcome back to the Europe live blog.

Today we will be looking at the latest in Spanish politics, as the country’s congress prepares to vote on Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s (almost certainly doomed) bid to become prime minister.

Feijóo’s conservative People’s party (PP) got the most votes in Spain’s July snap election, but failed to secure sufficient support to form a government.

Are you a reader in Spain following the vote? Send your comments: lili.bayer@theguardian.com.