“I know that one day I will cease to be president of the Government, but it will not be on July 23”, warned Pedro Sánchez in his final speech before the PSOE’s federal committee. A message that had a double reading: on the one hand, the Prime Minister assured, in this way, that the great electoral contest of 23-J is not lost in advance for the socialists, as some fear, nor is it inevitable a change in the political cycle in Spain in charge of the Popular Party and Vox.
“Once again, the decisive hour has arrived. And the first thing I want to tell you is that victory is possible”, emphasized Sánchez in the initial speech, to shake the discouragement that is spreading among the socialists and inject them with fighting morale. Even victory.
Another reading of Sánchez’s message that his time has not yet come, in an internal key, called for concluding the succession movements that are already taking place behind the scenes, if the electoral result is adverse, and which are not going unnoticed in Ferraz . There is an obvious sea of ​​funds in the PSOE, still contained, however, pending the scrutiny of the 23-J.
The day yesterday threatened to be a storm, after the clashes resolved the day before between the federal leadership of the PSOE and some socialist territorial leaders, due to the last-minute changes imposed on the candidacies for Congress and the Senate. The president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano GarcÃa-Page, now strengthened with a new absolute majority, chose not to go to the federal committee yesterday, despite the fact that the day before he managed to get Ferraz not to alter the lists.
The acting president of Aragon, Javier Lambán, and other delegates from Zaragoza and Teruel did not attend either, as a sign of protest and “dissatisfaction” with the changes imposed on the lists of these provinces. Another noted absence was that of the mayor of Valladolid, Óscar Puente, who is now also leaving. “Things are said here”, Sánchez later reproached them, implicitly, to all of them.
Neither did the president of Asturias, Adrián Barbón, who excused himself because he had a wedding, although Ferraz does not attribute his distance to a dislike for the lists – Ferraz accepted without complaint that Adriana Lastra lead the Asturian candidacy – but for another type of expectations for the possible post-electoral scenario.
But everyone else did attend the federal committee. Singularly, they went to “show their face” to two other territorial leaders who felt harmed, and even “delegitimized” by the changes imposed by Ferraz on the lists.
Thus, the still Valencian president, Ximo Puig, who displayed elegance when he prioritized the interest of the PSOE in the face of the imminent elections to his personal opinion on those who try to move his chair, in Ferraz and in Valencia, after ‘having achieved the best electoral result in his territory since 2007. “If there is a succession, it will not be decided here or by some people there”, warned those loyal to Puig.
Also the leader of the PSOE of Castile and Leon, Luis Tudanca, was “outraged, disappointed and enormously disappointed”, at the gates of Ferraz, by the changes imposed on the candidacies in his territory. He was also “very hard” in the intervention behind closed doors, in front of Sánchez. But, like Puig, Tudanca prioritized the responsibility with the PSOE before the new general elections, and assured that “he will leave his skin” in the campaign.
In this way, the storm thinned out, at least until the 23rd, and the sun ended up rising over Ferraz, and this is not a metaphor. The “closing of the ranks” prevailed over discouragement and internal protests, and the federal committee approved with a show of hands, “unanimously”, all the electoral candidacies.
“We must continue”, summarized some, with resignation. “We continue to govern”, added others, more encouraged, after listening to Sánchez and the interventions of other territorial leaders, such as those of the extremist Guillermo Fernández Vara and the Basque Eneko Andueza, among the most highlighted.
Pedro Sánchez, like many of them, called the socialists to unity. “It is important that the PSOE comes out united, brave and powerful”, warned the President of the Government. “It will depend on our victory that Spain advances or retreats”, he wielded as a disjunctive. “We want to win because we want to build the best Spain”, he justified.
The PSOE leader began by celebrating the agreement reached the day before by Sumar and Podemos to stand together in the general elections. “It is more than positive news”, emphasized Sánchez. And he assured that, in this way, the dispersion of the vote of the left will be avoided, which already caused the elections of 28- M that the PSOE will be evicted from many of the autonomous presidencies and the main mayorships that it governed .
The pact obtained by Yolanda DÃaz in the political space to the left of the PSOE, as she emphasized, will avoid spending energy “uselessly” and, in addition, will leave behind a “sterile noise”, very demobilizing for the entire progressive electorate .
But, nevertheless, Sánchez warned that “the maximum responsibility for what happens rests with the socialists”, to be able to re-edit a progressive government after 23-J. “The PSOE is already on the way and we are going to win the elections”, he ensure. “We will not give up, we will make the journey continue”, he encouraged them. “We continue to fight with all our strength the reactionary forces, to make Spain progress”, he insisted. And he called on the “social majority” of the country to take “a step forward” and vote for the PSOE “so that Spain continues to move forward instead of going backwards”.
Sánchez also directed the spotlight against Alberto Núñez Feijóo and denounced the “cocktail of lack of economic plan, social regression and fiscal injustice”. In addition, the president vindicated the Government’s management, as well as the good figures for economic growth and job creation in Spain recorded, he pointed out, by international bodies such as the ECB, the IMF and the OECD. For this reason, he warned of “a truth like a temple”. “The Spanish economy is going like a motorcycle and is not stagnant as Feijóo says”, he defended.
“There is no economic alternative on the part of the PP”, warned the head of the Executive. “We have a plan and they have nothing. We have Nadia, and they have no one”, he emphasized, referring to the economic vice president, Nadia Calviño. “We have everything they don’t have”, assured Sánchez. Now all that’s left is the votes for him to win the ultimate battle of 23-J.
