“That the person who presides over the Chamber be ‘sensitive’ towards Catalonia”. That demand was one of the four points, thus, textual, that Junts put on the table to give his vote to the PSOE candidate to preside over the Congress of Deputies. And that “sensitive person” had a proper name: Francina Armengol, Pharmacist by training and a politician for a long time, born in Inca on August 11, 1971, the most reliable for the independence movement of the many who inhabit the Catalan wing of the PSOE, be it PSC, PSPV or PSIB.
In her first speech as president, Armengol has already announced that she will allow the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in Congress with immediate effect. “Defending parliamentary democracy, and this is what corresponds to all of us, is to respect and preserve the diversity that coexists in our country and that the ballot boxes have brought here,” she defended Armengol.
His election was confirmed this Thursday, with 178 votes in favour, that is, an unexpected absolute majority minutes before. The 7 from Junts were on his side, in addition to the 121 from the PSOE, the 31 from Sumar, the 7 from ERC, the 5 from the PNV and the 6 from Bildu.
Was acclamation in the denouement and there was a lot of intrigue until coronation in the Carrera de San Jerónimo, where his name had been running through the corridors of the Lower House for days. EL MUNDO published on August 10 that the PSOE would put a candidate “of the taste of the nationalists” at the head of Congress. And that person is Francina Armengol. Her application was made to wait up to 38 hours before the Constitution of the Cortes. And then the PSOE confirmed it. Hours later, he appeared hand in hand with Pedro Sánchez at the first meeting with the parliamentary group, this Wednesday.
All were nods from the president of the government to the nationalist formations that he needed not only to achieve the presidency of Parliament but also later in the face of a potential investiture.
The trajectory of Armengol, who has governed with the sovereignists of Month y We can in the Balearic Islands During two legislatures, in addition to her own government action, complicit with Catalanism, they made her a well-received figure in the pro-independence parties. These forces, in private, recognized in recent days that Armengol’s was “a name that sounds good” or “better than anyone else.” Among other points, the PSOE already highlighted when announcing her candidacy that she is “an example of a country that lives naturally in the wealth of the various languages spoken in Spain.”