There were no dinners, but there were calls and an exchange of opinions on who should take the reins of the PSOE if Pedro Sánchez resigned as president of the government after his five days of reflection in April . Socialists were then divided between those who were shocked and those who rushed to anticipate or perpetrate possible scenarios. The latter’s movements were short-circuited in some cases and considered bizarre in others. Everything came to fruition only when the general secretary of the socialists decided to remain in office and, immediately afterwards, to avoid speculation and conciliation, he announced that he would seek a new mandate. If nothing changes and the legislature comes to an end, Sánchez will be at least until 2027. What happens next regarding the national leadership will depend on the outcome of the next general elections and, above all, whether or not the PSOE remains in government. . And it is a maxim unanimously accepted among the leaders and also among the bases.
Quite the opposite of what the agitation of executives and activists in the different territories indicates, where changes are expected in the current leadership. Certainly, in seven of the 17 Autonomous Communities, although in two of them – the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands – it will depend on the will of the current general secretaries, respectively Francina Armengol and Ángel Víctor Torres. Nothing suggests possible rivals if both want to stay in power. The first, in whose federation there is no internal dispute, is today president of the Congress of Deputies and is also in favor of withdrawing from her organic responsibilities to promote an orderly replacement. The second, for his part, aspires to run again as a candidate in the Canary Islands after his time in the Spanish government. At least that’s the goal that was conveyed to federal leaders, as Ferraz’s sources attest.
The situation is very different in Aragon, La Rioja, Andalusia, Castilla y León, Madrid and even in Asturias, where the federal leadership detects a swell which, in some cases, can turn into a tsunami which, in socialist and organic terms , is usually synonymous with internal struggle with unpredictable consequences. Nothing new happens in parties when they lose institutional power or have not held it for decades, as is the case of the PSOE in Madrid.
And never before, as in the 2023 regional elections, has the PSOE lost so many governments to the right in a single day. On March 28, a year ago, the people of Sánchez saw their territorial power reduced to a minimum compared to 2019, when they surrendered the red card, totaling nine autonomous governments. Four years later, those of Valencia, Extremadura, Aragon, La Rioja, Balearic Islands and Canary Islands lost and left the government coalition in Cantabria, but since then only Extremadura Guillermo Fernández- Vara and the Valencian Ximo Puig opened the biological process. promote a generational change in their respective general secretariats. Today, in both territories, there are new leaderships. That of Minister Diana Morant in Valencia, after an agreement sponsored by Ferraz which included two other candidates and that of Miguel Ángel Gallardo in Extremadura, who beat Lara Garlito, with 56.2% of the votes.
Unlike Vara and Puig, the Aragonese Javier Lambán preferred to remain secretary general until the next ordinary regional congress, which will arrive after the ordinary federal conclave that Ferraz plans for spring 2025. The decision of one of Pedro’s most critical Sánchez has caused tensions between provincial leaders and there is already talk of sabre-rattling. In February, the socialists of Huesca demanded an extraordinary congress to remove Lambán from office, while the party leaderships of Zaragoza and Teruel aligned themselves with Lambán and called for closing ranks with the current leader and not open internal war. A battle that in any case will take place when the congress is convened, since no one doubts that the more than certain candidacy of the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría, who will have the approval of Ferraz, “will have to face a candidate that the current secretary general will surely promote,” say the federal leaders.
Sword unrest in Andalusia and Ferraz
Andalusia is another of the territories where there is unease with the current secretary general, Juan Espadas, who in 2021 had the blessing of Madrid to remove Susana Díaz from the leadership and won the primaries with 55.05% of the support of the Andalusian socialists compared to the 38.7% added by the former president of the Board of Directors. Today, the federation’s dissatisfaction with its management is notable, as well as with the federal leadership, from which it is affirmed that “it has not been able to form solid teams capable of building an alternative” to the popular Juanma Moreno. Andalusia is key territory for the national PSOE and since the socialists left the regional government in 2018, they have only lost support in elections. This happened in the 2022 regional elections, the 2023 municipal elections and the general elections of the same year where the PP achieved an indisputable victory.
Espadas’ leadership is more than questioned because in Madrid it is considered “finished”. So much so that, around Espadas himself, every time there is a change of minister in Sánchez’s cabinet, someone is responsible for placing him in the reserve of ministers, an option that La Moncloa and Ferraz calls it “absurd”. Whatever the future of Espadas, the truth is that the PSOE’s largest federation has long since ceased to be what it called the backbone of the brand. Many see Vice President María Jesús Montero as a possible solution for a systemic federation for socialists, something she prefers not to hear.
Lobato, the umpteenth failed attempt
The problem of the Madrid federation is even more serious, since it has not governed the Community for almost 30 years and has chained together several failing directorates whose responsibility cannot be removed from the various federal directorates. In a territory accustomed to defeat and where organic balance has always prevailed in the preparation of electoral lists, Zapatero and Sánchez did not resign themselves to giving in and both failed. The secretary general, Juan Lobato, in office since 2021, won the primaries against the mayor of Fuenlabrada, Javier Ayala, with more than 61%. And irony of today’s politics, Ayala himself is one of the names that abound in the socialist universe to save from famine a federation where historically its leaders take longer to arrive than to be relegated and in which no one has ever achieved a minimum of organic stability. Hence the succession of debacles.
Aiming for historic Asturian bicephaly
Concha Andreu subscribed to the Lambán formula of not facilitating the replacement after losing the regional government and not calling an extraordinary congress, although unlike the Aragonese she intends to continue in the position of secretary general, which Ferraz is not very clear. in light of the discontent that permeates the federation. The federal leadership also plans primaries and a tough organic battle here, just as in Castile and León, where it believes that “12 years are enough for the mandate of Luis Tudanca” and that “there are internal movements” that make waves.
Special mention should be made of Asturias, one of the few governments that managed, albeit narrowly, to retain the PSOE in 2023. The Asturian Socialists won 19 seats, which, added to the three of IU-Más País and the sole representative of Podemos, reached an absolute majority. And we cannot say that the federation took up arms against its general secretary, Adrián Barbón, but rather against the one who, after being defenestrated as deputy general secretary of the PSOE, today occupies the same position within the federation Asturian socialist. According to a leader of the ASL, he is attributed with “clandestine movements seeking support throughout the territory to conquer the Asturian leadership and many others in the conception of post-sanchism”, but above all “a negative influence on Barbón », which caused a lot of tension in the territory. So much so that a week ago, an extraordinary assembly was convened, from which Lastra came out, according to several present, “crying after having forced the President of the Principality to announce his desire to stand for election” to silence rumors of his hypothetical aspirations. The conclave took place with “a succession of interventions by institutional leaders for the greater glory of Lastra, previously prepared”, always according to the version of some of the participants.
The internal response to Lastra, continue the same interlocutors, extended to Barbón “because of the strange communion between the two” and no one excludes that around her, an alternative to the current secretary general is promoted during the next congress which, if successful, it would regain the historical two-headedness that the ASL maintained between organic and institutional leadership, broken with the former president of the Principality, Javier Fernández. The echo of the agitation of the Asturian organization reached Ferraz, who is followed with concern, although for the moment without any desire to intervene. Pedro Sánchez is informed of the developments and all the details, even if he has made it clear to his hard core that “it is not yet the time” to open this file of socialism.
In Galicia, Euskadi, Cantabria, Catalonia, Navarre, Castile-La Mancha and Murcia there is no swell and no alternative to the current leadership is planned. In the rest of the federations – with the exception of Extremadura and Valencia, which held extraordinary congresses in 2024 – anything can happen because the PSOE has been waiting since May 2023 for a generational change that coincides with its greatest moment of territorial weakness and with which he intends to launch towards the reconquest of institutional power. And this, even though seven of the 17 general secretaries have only been in office for three years.
