A party with a history as long as PSOEwhose Spanish political life spans three centuries, offers an unbeatable perspective from which to try to envisage its immediate future. Thus, rereadings of the past can be used to probe the geological scars which would explain some of the movements which today push, even imperceptibly, Ferraz’s party to present his worst face since at least 1974.
In a thoughtful article, like all yours, Regino Garcia-Badell This week, he rightly recalled the anniversary of the last congress of the PSOE in exile, held in Suresnes between October 11 and 13, fifty years ago now. This is a historic turning point, during which the party ended up resigning at the hands of Felipe Gonzalez to its Marxist ideological postulates in 1979 to offer itself as a social-democratic alternative.
With their commitment to the very young González and his team, the leaders of the major European social democratic parties attempted to build a sister party with which to reinforce the political and economic strengthening of Western Europe against the communist blocwhose strengthening of their training was decisive in their respective countries.
Thus, faced with the foreseeable establishment of democracy upon the death of Francits objective was to counter, with a left-wing formation, the strength of a PCE which led the opposition to the regime. The operation could not have gone better and in 1982, just five years after the first democratic elections, Felipe González won a landslide victory.
As García-Badell points out, the protagonists of this turning point, which profoundly marked the political geology of the PSOE, today constitute the radical opposition to the current leader. Pedro Sanchez and the autocratic drift towards which he is leading the party. A question that cannot be ignored.
At the next federal congress of the party, which will be held next October, we will undoubtedly see how Sánchez will fight with an iron fist those who do not agree, however timid they may be. This is why this conference invites us to reflect on these telluric movements that I mentioned previously. Because sanchismo presents itself as a continuity of itself in a strategy which is none other than the realization of the old aspiration of Spanish socialism: that of trying to ensure that the party merges with the state.
For some time now, this purpose has become more than obvious, with the parasitization of institutions, the assault on ministries, businesses, organizations and public media by legions of activists and drug addicts; the attempt to control judges; the demonization of the democratic alternative or the action plan to establish the government monopoly on hoaxes.
One of the occasions when this tectonic fault through which totalitarian magmas escape appeared most clearly, as is the case today, within the PSOE, was at the time of the party’s peak in the course of the Second Republicwhen he had three ministers in the government.
At that time, in October 1932, the party held its congress in the party hall of the Teatro Metropolitano in Madrid. There was debate about the continuity or not of the collaboration in power with the Republicans, due to the wear and tear that this governance caused to the party in the face of large social sectors dissatisfied with the pace and scope of reforms and eager for revolutionary changes.
The alliance with bourgeois forces This was a recurring question in socialist congresses since 1888, but in 1932 it was posed as a real crossroads where the party could risk its survival. Supporters of the end of this collaboration affirmed that “once the Republic is stabilized, the socialist party will devote itself to clearly anti-capitalist action, independent of any commitment to the bourgeois forces, and will direct all its efforts towards the total conquest” of Power. for the realization of socialism.”
This is how the text of the opinion presented to Congress to end the presence in the government reads. Indalecio Prietothen Minister of Public Works, proposed an amendment to the opinion which was finally approved by an overwhelming majority: it would be accepted to conclude the participation of the PSOE in power when circumstances permitted, without harming the consolidation of the Republic. and “without risk for the left tendency indicated by the new regime in the Basic Law of the State.
As Prieto explained in his speech, the PSOE could only renounce its democratic collaboration with the Republican parties and follow the path of its revolutionary ideology if it was assured that the right would never govern in the Republic. The appeal to the revolutionary spirit of the party allowed, paradoxically, Prieto to save the furniture of his reformist option and even to obtain support for his amendment of a Long Knight that he would soon embrace the Bolshevik path, actually or apparently, as historians discuss.
The 1932 congress included the approval of an initiative for the dissolution of the Civil Guardwhich was then considered an unusual procedure for a government party facing growing street unrest. Today, it causes the same astonishment that a ruling party, also surrounded by serious signs of corruption at all levels, promotes amnesty for corrupt politicians and the reduction of the crime of embezzlement of public funds.
This page from the past clearly brings us back to the most opportunistic image of the PSOE on the current scene, reflected in the mirror of Pedro Sánchez. A party capable of pretending to know how to swim and put away its clothes when in reality it does neither, except to devote its main and priority efforts, in addition to the multi-million dollar sums of money of taxpayers, to permanently retain power at any cost.
The only exercise which during its next congress could bring the PSOE back on the path of the meaning of the State and not that of the State without meaning, of moral and non-fiscal scalesof loyalty to the law and not to the leader, is to debate an opinion in the manner of the 1932 congress on whether or not to remain in government in alliance with admirers of Wallthe heirs of ETA and the putschist parties of 1-O.
In short, the real ideological and political dilemma that socialists must consider is whether or not they will remain in power thanks to the support of those who want to envelop constitutional Spain by agreeing with Sánchez on new privileges for their territories , at the cost of the continued violation of rights and pick pockets of the vast majority of Spaniards.
The great paradox is that, as happened in 1932, rejecting permanence in power at all costs, denying its current partners, would be the authentically revolutionary position of the party today. And it is because the PSOE has opted today for the most bourgeois attitude, with Pedro Sánchez at its head: accept being slavishly humiliated daily by those on whom he depends to have a helicopter or an official car to continue picking him up at the door of the house, for which we all also pay, table and tablecloth included.
