First of all, loyalty. And then we’ll see. This is the message with which the PSOE is facing, for the moment, the thorny debate on the reform of an autonomous financing system that has not yet been detailed and that includes a “singularity” for Catalonia also, until now, not specified. This was the central topic of the discussions of the Federal Committee this Saturday, which thwarted the expectations of those who predicted a high-tension socialist lockdown, as in the past. And it does not bring much news on how the president intends to resolve the disorder of territorial taxation, but it confirms that the Socialist Party is a party that is, today, very far from any hypothesis of internal rebellion.
Because, in the end, there was much less discussion behind closed doors than what was announced behind closed doors. There was an explicit appeal from Pedro Sánchez to his party so that internal criticism does not further harm an already stormy legislature. “To win the regional and municipal elections of 2027, we must take care of the Government,” he warned his barons in the speech with which he closed the conclave.
At that moment, neither Emiliano García-Page nor Javier Lambán were already present in the room and therefore could not hear the express request for “loyalty” made by the general secretary. “We are the most powerful social democratic project in Europe. With the action of the government, with your dynamism and loyalty, we will be invincible,” Sánchez told the leaders of his party and the territorial federations.
And this call for rapprochement has had its effect. The incessant flow of explicit or veiled criticism from many territorial leaders that has lasted all summer since the agreement between the PSC and the ERC was known, and that even reached the doors of the Ferraz headquarters for the first time on Saturday, stopped barely when Pedro Sánchez’s first open intervention ended and the speaking rounds began behind closed doors. From that moment on, many of the reproaches that were once thrown to the four winds were so attenuated that they were barely perceived as an affront by the party leadership. And others even ended up being transformed into compliments to let the usual people resonate in the echo of their solitude: Emiliano-García Page and Javier Lambán.
The socialist leaders of Castilla-La Mancha and Aragon were explosive in their statements to the press. “I come with enormous concern for the country and for the founding values of the left and social democracy. The proposal that I have read, that of Esquerra, is more selfish than socialist. It is incomprehensible and indefensible,” Page declared at ten thirty in the morning in front of a series of microphones before setting foot in the PSOE headquarters. An hour later, in his speech behind closed doors, he maintained his criticism of the pact reached in Catalonia, although, according to those who listened to him, he did so in a “much more respectful, more restrained” tone.
The contrast was much greater in the message of the other leaders. The general secretary of the PSOE of Extremadura, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, has been in recent weeks one of the voices that has openly spoken out against the tax privilege of Catalonia compared to other territories. And even this Saturday, he publicly criticized his party for not having previously hosted a forum “for dialogue and reflection” on the issue. However, inside, his speech focused on reproaches against the popular president of Extremadura, María Guardiola, and although he alluded to his concern about the pact signed between the PSC and the ERC, he limited himself to showing his conviction that the reform in progress will be resolved “within social justice and equality.”
Even more explicit were the compliments addressed to the leadership of his party and to the government of the leader of the Andalusian socialists, Juan Espadas, another of the leaders who had put on the table during the summer his reservations about what had been signed in Catalonia and who before In the press, he had come on Saturday to demand that the reform of the financing of the regions be “good for everyone, not just for a few”. Inside, Espadas insisted on the idea of interterritorial solidarity and insisted that now “there is a socialist who works for a better Catalonia but also for a better Spain”, in reference to Salvador Illa.
Neither Luis Tudanca (Castilla y León) nor Juan Lobato (Community of Madrid) openly criticized their party’s commitment to the Catalan independence movement in their speeches behind closed doors. Both demanded fair funding for their respective territories that would eliminate the ghost of a Spain whose territories benefited at the expense of others, but they were far from the path traced by Page and Lambán of openly confronting Pedro Sánchez with the path taken in Catalonia.
The assessment of the party leadership at the end of the Federal Committee was that, despite all the difficulties, the PSOE is far from experiencing a period of internal combustion. The next flying target is set for the end of November. The Congress is already looming on the political horizon next autumn, an event for which no one discusses or will discuss the power of Pedro Sánchez and in which many positions and positions are at stake. Another incentive to temper internal criticism, even if the enigmas and skepticisms regarding the budget pact with Catalonia remain intact.
