Juan Lobato resigned this Wednesday from his post as leader of the PSOE in Madrid, 24 hours after declaring that he would not do so. In a letter, Lobato assured that he was leaving after admitting this Monday to having recorded before a notary a conversation with Pilar Sánchez Acera, chief of staff of Minister Óscar López, about the alleged leak of the email sent by the partner of Isabel Diaz Ayuso. to the prosecution recognizing his double tax fraud.
“I have made the decision not to continue as secretary general of the PSOE of Madrid,” Lobato said in a letter he sent to activists and the press early Wednesday afternoon. “I am doing this to put an end to a situation of confrontation and serious divisions that was generating within the party, which was only harming the PSOE of Madrid and the progress in unity that we had made during these three years. My goal has always been to enthusiastically build an ambitious project for Madrid, and this must continue to be the case in the future,” he said.
In the letter, which comes just 24 hours after the appearance in which he suggested he was following him, Lobato also criticized his own party. “Without a doubt, my way of doing politics is not the same or perhaps sometimes compatible with that of a majority of the current leadership of my party. No problem. I assume it democratically. But I can’t give up being who I am and what I’ve always been,” he said.
“I have always made it clear that the politics in which I believe have at their core dialogue and debate, public service, honesty and the general interest. I believe in a politics in which people with different positions can agree on things that benefit citizens. Because the common good must come before any political position. “I do not believe in the destruction of the adversary, in the annihilation of those who do not agree and those who think differently,” he added, concluding: “For me, politics , it’s something else.”
“And loyalty to my party means working to implement its principles, what it has represented for more than 145 years: equality, freedom, democracy, education and public health, defense of the most vulnerable, not leaving anyone behind,” he added.
“None of us are essential. It is far more important at any time to protect and promote good policy than for those of us who exercise it in a circumstantial way,” he said, in addition to betting. I think we have to bet decisively on politics “with capital letters”. According to him, this is the strategy he has practiced in recent months, as leader of the PSOE in Madrid “He who listens, he who argues, he who does not. don’t insult and does not annihilate his own or the other’s, but rather tries to convince them and seek common ground “I do not envisage any other way of doing politics.”
The judicial horizon
In principle, Lobato will remain a socialist activist. “My commitment to the PSOE continues and will continue to be there. Today, I am taking a step towards leadership. But you have my commitment that at every appropriate future stage, I will fulfill my responsibility as an activist to help the party continue to work to improve people’s lives. As always, alongside the thousands of women and men who share activism and the millions of citizens who cannot resign themselves to being mere spectators in this society.
The former leader of Madrid’s socialists was called to testify this Friday before the Supreme Court judge who is investigating the attorney general for the alleged leak of emails from Alberto González Amador’s lawyer, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, reports Alberto Pozas. According to the ABC newspaper, Lobato went to a notary in early November to record some messages that he had exchanged months ago, in March 2024, with Pilar Sánchez Acera, then in Moncloa under the orders of Óscar López. Some messages in which, according to Lobato’s version, Sánchez Acera had urged him to disseminate these emails to the Madrid Assembly before Ayuso herself.
Lobato repeatedly insisted that he did this to be able to demonstrate that neither the PSOE nor Moncloa had ever obtained these emails before they were published in the media that morning.
