The former deputy secretary general of the PSOE, Adriana Lastrawill be appointed next week as the new government delegate in Asturias, replacing Delia Losa, who has been in office since the arrival of Pedro Sanchez in La Moncloa in June 2018. With this appointment, Sánchez finds one of his oldest and most loyal collaborators, who will occupy for the first time in his career an institutional position, which he will also hold in his community of origin.
Losa herself, in statements to the media this Wednesday in Oviedo, reported by Europa Press, said that the dismissal occurred “by her own decision” and “as part of a natural process in which political positions have a beginning and an end.” For his part, the president of the Popular Party (PP) of the Principality of Asturias, Alvaro Queipocriticized this appointment, which he attributes to a “bunkerization of the PSOE.”
Since her resignation as number two of the PSOE in July 2022, Lastra has maintained a discreet political profile as a deputy for her native province and member of the leadership of the Asturian PSOE, after several years on the front line of political life, where in addition to her organic responsibilities in Ferraz, she became at the same time parliamentary spokesperson of the party in the Congress of Deputies.
Her departure, never fully explained, occurred in a context of growing tensions with the party’s organization secretary, Santos Cerdán, and she was replaced by Maria Jesus Montero, who, a year later, would also reach the first vice-presidency of the government, while continuing to be head of the Treasury portfolio. The greatest accumulation of organic and institutional power that can be remembered in Spanish politics since the cases of the popular Francisco Álvarez Cascos and the socialist Alfonso Guerra.
Alongside Lastra, and within a hidden but intense battle within the Ferraz apparatus, other leaders considered close to her have ceased to have responsibilities in the party, among them the one who became spokesman for the Federal Executive, Felipe Sicilia, who today returned to his functions as a civil servant of the National Police.
Lastra and “the future”
Recently, at a campaign rally for the European elections in Asturias, Sánchez publicly congratulated Lastra, who was present in the front rows of the event. “We look back and see Maricuela [una histórica socialista asturiana fallecida este año a los 105 años de edad]and we look to the future and see Adriana Lastra. They look back and see the women’s section and, in the future, the most absolute nothingness,” he said in reference to the right. A few words from the PSOE leader that have triggered some speculation about a possible recovery of Lastra for the political front, which is now happening in a certain way.
Previously, and during Sánchez’s five days of reflection after his letter to citizens in April in which he threatened to resign, Lastra spoke out, like the majority of the party, to demand that he remain president, which she did at a press conference at the headquarters of the Asturian PSOE, where she holds the position of deputy secretary for political action.
In the public statement two years ago announcing his resignation from his position as Sánchez’s right-hand man in the PSOE Federal Executive, Lastra referred to “important changes in my personal life that require tranquility and rest and that, in the last two weeks, they have forced me to take sick leave that will last for some time.” In addition, he attributed his decision to “the difficulty of combining the demands of rest and care, essential in my current situation, with the intensity demanded by the party leadership.”
Born in 1979 in Ribadesella and mother of a small child, Lastra has always supported Sánchez in all internal processes, as well as during her resignation forced by the party barons in October 2016. Shortly after, as a deputy, and unlike more than a dozen socialist parliamentarians who broke electoral discipline, she supported Rajoy’s investiture with an abstention, although they said they had done so “out of necessity”.
