• Parties’ negotiating teams set to meet at 4:30 pm Monday in Congress •
At the initiative of Alberto Garzón, leader of the United Left party (IU), the negotiating teams of the Socialist party (PSOE), anti-austerity party Podemos, Valencia’s Compromís and the IU will meet Monday afternoon to see if they can find enough common ground on programs and policies to enable each party to vote in favor of PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez in the presidential investiture balloting scheduled next week in Congress.
On Friday, PSOE’s Sánchez said in response to Garzón’s meeting request that he would reconsider his previous decision not meet with Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias until after he and Iglesias’ respective negotiating teams had met to work out a coalition deal, as long as the IU proposal was to focus on reaching agreement in voting on Sánchez’s investiture bid, rather than working out details of a power-sharing accord with Podemos.
PSOE formally rejected Podemos’ coalition government proposal on Saturday, but in a letter Sunday to Sánchez, Iglesias and Compromis leader Joan Baldoví, Garzon said that the meeting Monday was still on and would focus on the upcoming investiture vote, though the negotiators were also free to discuss any possibility of forming a coalition government. It is unclear whether Sánchez or Iglesias will head their respective parties’ negotiating teams at Monday’s meeting
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