Spain’s acting deputy prime minister went to Brussels on Monday to meet exiled Catalan politician Carles Puigdemont, seeking support from a separatist fugitive from Spanish justice to keep Pedro Sanchez’s left-leaning coalition in power.

An inconclusive election on July 23 resulted in a hung parliament, making Puigdemont, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium since leading Catalonia’s failed push for secession from Spain in 2017, the unlikely kingmaker.

Alberto Nunez Feijoo, whose conservative People’s Party won the most votes in the election, will take the first stab at an investiture vote on Sept. 27, although his chances of winning are seen as slim, as he is still four votes short after receiving support from his few allies including far-right Vox. 

Meanwhile, Sanchez, the Socialist head of the caretaker leftist coalition government, is in talks to get the necessary support for his own candidacy in a hypothetical second vote, once the conservative leader’s attempt to form a government has failed.

The support or abstention by Puigdemont’s Junts party, and an array of other separatist or regionalist parties that have supported Sanchez in the past, will be crucial for winning the right to form a government.

Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Diaz’s leftist party Sumar said in a statement her planned talks with Puigdemont were “another step in our firm bid to open a new era of solutions based on dialogue and democracy.”

Sanchez’s Socialist Party said the meeting was strictly Sumar’s agenda although they had been informed it would take place.

The parties on the right have condemned Sanchez’s reliance on separatist parties in the previous legislature, and the current attempts to sway Junts, as betrayal of Spain’s interests for the sake of preserving power.
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