“The support in cities like this is maximum”

This is not the only reason given in the city to explain its success. The ability to reach agreements and consensus is also valued. Three years ago, that made him “the Ferraz man.” From now on, this title is far from him. “Some other votes fell on him because he’s handsome,” someone says at a bar.

Coincidence or not, this may be the only thing he shares with Pedro Sánchez today, other than a party. Despite the fact that just twelve days ago, Lobato was the only escort of Begoña Gómez, wife of the President of the Government, to the commission of inquiry that took place in the Madrid Assembly.

The general secretary of the PSM is in the pillory. This Tuesday, early in the morning, during an appearance without questions – something he is not used to – the leader of the Socialist Party of Madrid denounced the “lynching” received by “certain leaders of his party” for having recorded WhatsApp messages before a notary. that he exchanged with the right arm of Óscar López and in which, supposedly, they offered him information on the legal proceedings opened to the boyfriend of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, who attacked several times. Lobato calls him a “telepreacher” for his frequent use of televisions.

This matter must be judicially resolved next Friday, November 29, at 10 a.m. Before him Supreme Courtthe instructor of the case against State Attorney General He will take a statement as a witness to what happened.

Then I should go to Seville. In the Andalusian capital, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party is celebrating its 41st Federal Congress. However, Ferraz has already sent him a clear message. “They don’t want me to be in Seville,” socialist sources told the newspaper a few days ago.

Lobato’s support appears rare. Inside the Town Hall where he exercised command, they made it known that they were with him. “Juan is very loved and support for him is maximum here,” municipal sources point out. This does not mean that no member of the PSOE in the city or in the municipal council wanted to make a statement at any time.

It also benefits from the support of the Community of Madrid. This is the strategy that Lobato has set for itself for a year and a half. Just like Pedro Sánchez when he was defenestrated by his party, Lobato spent all these months traveling the region by car, from town to town, door to door, and meeting with all the municipal groups.

However, this is not the case in all municipalities. Reyes Maroto, spokesperson for the PSOE at Madrid City Hallaccused Lobato this Tuesday of “lack of loyalty” towards a colleague. More specifically, it refers to Pilar Sánchez Aceraright arm of Óscar López, the man who could move his chair.

Lobato does not have the support of Madrid’s most important local leaders. Maroto knows this, who asked him to submit to a vote of confidence and to convene the Regional Executive Committee of the Socialists of Madrid. “Juan Lobato must give explanations for activism because it is clear that we must regain their trust again,” exclaimed Maroto.

Listening to Felipe González

Juan Lobato practically has socialism in his veins. When he was little, his father, a socialist activist, had tapes of political speeches by Felipe González and Tierno Galván. “I listened to them on tape. I did it so much that I knew them by heart,” he admitted to Madrid Total.

This boy grew up in Soto del Real with the same fame as today, that of formality. He himself admitted that he participated in drinking parties and that the greatest folly was to paint his head one color and the other half another. For the moment, this photograph remains preserved. Otherwise, he was the ideal son-in-law, at least for his friends’ mothers.

The formal boy has grown up. At 18, he was already municipal spokesperson for the socialist group, but it cost him dearly. “I have become an idiot”he admitted in the interview offered in this newspaper, in which he recalls that a friend stopped him and that “the absurdities” disappeared.

Sooner or later, Lobato graduated in Law and administration and business management. Then he got a job as a Treasury technician – “and people still voted for him,” jokes a Soto del Rey worker – and started a family.

During this personal meeting, he recognized that his wife, Susana, who worked for 14 years at Atresmedia, and his three children are his “fundamental emotional pillar”. “Every time I walk into the house and kids start climbing on my legs, I tune out,” he admits.

The greatest curiosity in his daily life is culinary: he only eats fish outside the house. The reason is that his wife is allergic.

“Betrayal” of the people

Juan Lobato was municipal councilor of Soto del Real from the age of 18 until 2021. During this journey, until 2015, he was spokesperson for the socialist group. In other words, what happens within City Hall is well known. To the point that neighbors claim that even “people at Vox voted for him because of who he is as a person.”

This explains how he managed to change the paradigm in the city. “Before, the PP always won,” say the neighbors. In fact, since the Franco era, it has been a fixed popular square.

However, in 2015, Lobato changed the game. He narrowly won and made deals to be able to govern. This legislature would also be the first in which he would participate in Madrid Assembly. Four years later, his neighbors gave him an absolute majority in Soto del Real as a reward for his good work.

Shortly before this event, at 2017had attempted for the first time to attack the party’s general secretary in Madrid. However, he failed to prevail in a vote in which he faced José Manuel Franco and Eusebio Gonzalez.

Then 2021 arrived and Lobato gave what she was looking for: the general secretary of the PSM. He will leave the town to devote himself entirely to regional life. “We feel that here a little betrayal“, comments a lady Tuesday afternoon in Soto del Real.

For this, Lobato had the support of the party. It was him ‘the man from Ferraz’ thanks to the fact that he had constituted a transversal group in which he had brought together all the sensitivities gathered in the different Madrid formations. This shows him once again as a man of consensus, seeking the vote in younger, more liberal environments in Madrid after the fall of Citizens.

The truth is that Lobato’s job has not been easy. The PSM is coming out with very bad results, the worst in its history. The Madrid player took on the burden of a game that had to be rebuilt in just over a year to be able to stand up. Isabel Diaz Ayuso.

Against Moncloa

The honeymoon only lasted three years. Lobato is located on the socialist spectrum, closer to Emiliano García’s page — “I know him well and he’s a great guy,” he says of the man from Extremadura – which, if he’s “Ferraz’s man,” certainly isn’t.

Lobato is not the favorite of Moncloa because hasn’t finished “settling in”. None of the merits obtained were worth it and Moncloa would have prepared its own candidacy. The drums of war, however, have not sounded for so long, even though he has already warned that the “path of unity” was theirs.

The conversation with Óscar López’s right-hand man before a notary in October could be a symptom, a detail. It was the importance of this fact that raised the dust. The confirmation could be seen this Tuesday with his three-minute speech without questions in which he targeted Moncloa.

Lobato received information about the process of Pilar Sánchez Acera and they assured him that it had been “published in the media”. Otherwise, “it would be very serious,” he warned.

That is to say, he expressed doubts as to whether the emails sent to him in March came from the newspapers – this is what he said at the beginning – or from State Attorney General’s Office — investigated in the process. However, he tried to clarify them by specifying that he did not “consider” that what he had been told was false.

But the sentences were already on the table and there was no time for open explanations. Lobato, during his appearance this Tuesday, put his arm on the table with three sentences. “I see no problem in crediting the legal origin of this document”. “From the reaction it seems that in some way the veracity of what was said to me has been called into question.” “Democracy and law are always above political parties and their leaders.”