The current president of the government and secretary general of the PSOE has chosen a symbolic (and lost) place for his party, Seville, to host the federal congress with which he intends to protect himself and thus appease internal rebellions in its formation after having accepted the transfer of all taxes collected in Catalonia with the independentists of Esquerra Republicana in exchange for the presidency of this territory by Salvador Illa.
The coordination of the conclave in which he will present himself for re-election falls to two of his most faithful “squires”: the Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE, First Vice-President of the Government and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Monteroand the party’s organizing secretary, Santos Cerdán. Both will be in charge of developing an early federal congress to guarantee the re-election of the Pedro Sanchez as secretary general at the end of November, without giving his detractors time to find an alternative.
The chosen site is not a coincidence. In the province of Seville there is the most populated city in Andalusia, Dos Hermanas, run by the PSOEafter the map was almost entirely dyed blue in the last municipal elections in May 2023. The PP snatched the Seville mayoralty from the PSOE, which also lost its absolute majority in the Provincial Council for the first time.
Dos Hermanas was the starting point for his unexpected victory over Susana Díaz in the May 2017 primaries. after a grotesque Federal Committee that led him to resign in tears. And he also chose this city as the scene of the first pre-campaign for the elections of July 23, which, against all expectations, allowed him to continue in La Moncloa in the face of the insufficient majority of the PP and Vox.
In Seville, Rubalcaba beat Chacón
Seville was also the battlefield of the federal congress held in February 2012, in which the old guard of the PSOE, then with more power than today, managed to promote Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba to the General Secretariat against Carme Chacón. The so-called “dinosaurs” of the party, criticism of the drift of Sánchez’s PSOE and its concessions to the independentistssuch as Felipe González or Alfonso Guerragave their support to the deceased former Minister of the Interior and prevented a revolution from occurring in the party with the election of the Catalan politician. His support was decisive in preventing the future of the PSOE from being in the hands of a member of the PSC, a federation, the Catalan one, with a greater degree of autonomy than the others and which, in the ‘Sanchista’ leadership, replaced Andalusia as a socialist bastion and a main support for its leadership.
The organizing committee of the 41st Federal Congress will have with Santos Cerdán as general coordinator and with María Jesús Montero as coordinator attached. The spokesperson will be Esther Peña, as reported by the PSOE after the meeting of the Federal Committee held this Saturday in Madrid. Specifically, the presentation of the Congress will be coordinated by the president of the PSOE, Cristina Narbona; the secretary of studies and programs, Idoia Mendía, and the president of the Avanza Foundation, Manu Escudero.
