The organic weakness of the PSOE Lastra The exit of the crisis | Spain

In each plant of the socialist headquarters of Ferraz Street, when leaving the elevator, there is a great photo of the electoral campaigns. On the ground floor there was one of the celebration of the July 2023 elections with Pedro Sánchez, Begoña Gómez, Cristina Narbonne, María Jesús Montero and Santos Cerdán who have picked up during the weekend, but the mark of the former secretary of Organization, former deputy and ex -militant is indelible in the PSOE. Until Thursday, the Socialists assumed that Sanchez spoke through the mouth of Cerdán. The President of the Government, Required after the weekendhe spoke Monday in his man in the game, but until five days nobody doubted that Cerdán was Sánchez’s other face; A controller leader, who has minimized his circle of trust and a game as he plays almost everything to the same letter. In fact, there are five designated ministers for the autonomous 2027.

When that appointment with the polls arrives, just ten years have passed since Pedro Sánchez defeated the entire socialist apparatus in the primary of May 2017 and imposed a new PSOE model in which the intermediate powers lost relevance in favor of the leader. The socialist statutes enshrined the power of the Secretary General who, blessed by the militants, would have the last word for almost everything, in the face of the preeminent role before the Federal Committee of the PSOE, the organ where the territorial leaders had forced the Sánchez resignation in October 2016. What came after that unprecedented internal battle was an anesthetized party, with decision bodies composed only by related to the leader with an indisputable authority. The triumph of the motion of censure, the 2019 electoral victory and the Removed The rest of the 2023 campaign did.

The Sanchez that in 2015 had drawn by the minimum the Sorpasso Podemos in his first generals, turned the history of European socialist parties and managed to return the PSOE to power. The wave of The generals of April 2019 He opened mayors and regional presidents. Concha Andreu, in La Rioja, or María Chivite, in Navarra, would not have been presidents in those conservative territories without the favorable wind of Sanchismo. Emiliano García-Page (Castilla-La Mancha) and Javier Lambán (Aragon) were held in their territories, absent during those first years of the national forums while Ferraz finished off at Susanism In Andalusia. Sanchez not only had the favor of the bases, the polls had proved him right. He had not criticized enough to make himself heard in those first measures of the socialist leader in La Moncloa.

The context changed substantially with the negotiation of the amnesty so that Juns invests Sanchez after the electoral advance of 2023. The party had lost almost everything. Autonomous mayors and presidents paid the wear of a campaign of municipal and regional designed without thinking about the territories. Saving the Government of Spain was a matter of survival for the PSOE, so many which seemed intragiable. García-Page and Lambán returned to public forums to comment against and always received a call as a corrective: that of Santos Cerdán.

The plumber of the primaries of Sánchez and interlocutor of the PNV and Bildu in the motion of censure was always there in Ferraz responding with monosyllables to his boss and gaining his trust executing without grinding all his orders. Call the Discolos to stop bothering in public, move the lists at the last moment or, the most precious gesture by the PSOE elites, immolate with the toxic photo with Carlos Puigdemont To unlock the investiture of 2023. « The stability of the State is in the hands of Santos Cerdán, » said a prosecutor of socialism. What Sanchez controlled the PSOE? There is no doubt about that, but he did it through the collaborator in which he trusted without nuances, without counterweights. Cerdán was already in charge of acting so that there would be no: Adriana Lastra, Deputy Secretary General with a vocation to send at the socialist headquarters, resigned Before they were accused of the mentIDeros of playing to « after Sanchismo. »

The stab of Santos Cerdán is lethal because for the socialists it is very difficult to differentiate their figure from that of Sánchez, to whom the bases have granted an immense caudal of trust. The campaign of the generals of 2023, Written about the script of the victimization of the leader, reinforced those ties with the militancy and there were even historical leaders who came out to face the strategy, they said, of dehumanization of the president of the Government. « It’s not Sánchez, it’s us, » they proclaimed in a manifest veteran leaders of the Andalusian PSOE.

Many socialists attributed to Moncloa syndrome Sánchez resignation by letterwithout consulting it with anyone, in April 2024. There are many who now defend that the « disconnection of Sánchez » has caused him to be on the sidelines of his secretary of Organization that, according to the first inquiries of the UCO, acted as head of a corrupt plot. Did nothing jump the alarms? Who saw did not dare? The questions, for now without a response, torture the socialist paintings who see in the way of functioning of these years a double edge weapon. The organic weakness of the PSOE, where almost everything goes through the Moncloa and Ferraz, lasts the exit of this crisis.

At this Monday’s executive, no one openly raised the electoral advance that many bets on private To avoid contagion in municipal and regional elections. It seems difficult to be possible to encapsulate this debate with five ministers as candidates in the most populated communities (Andalusia, Aragon, the Canary Islands, Valencian Community or Madrid) in a federal PSOE in the letter of its statutes, but centralist in their decisions. The identification of the acronym with Sánchez is as intense as Pedro Sánchez’s with Santos Cerdán. There is not a gram of exaggeration in the severity of the moment through the Centennial Party.