September 1999. The PSPV celebrates its country congress in Valencia at the Palacio de Congresos after the new defeat suffered in May against Eduardo Zaplana. A few months before, its general secretary, Joan Romero, had resigned, a man who tried, in vain, to reorient the party by emphasizing the positions of social democracy and to separate it from certain Cainite practices. It is a confrontational congress, between Joan Ignasi Plà , the candidate supported by Ferraz. and Antonio Asuncion. The conclave was growing in tension as it advanced mired in anger. At dawn, insults were heard in the corridors, some even came to blows. Asunción and Ciprià Ciscar took a walk and, finally, Plà was chosen, when the light broke at dawn. Weeks later he would resign and a manager would be formed to settle the future of a party that had lost all its institutions in 1995.
Those of us who lived through that congress understood the fabulous capacity that Valencian socialism has to fracture and submit to a fratricidal war; causing numerous political corpses. After that congress it was confirmed that the PSPV was not going to have the capacity to recover muscle for many years. In 2015, Ximo Puig, with the worst result of this party in this autonomous region, reached the presidency of the Generalitat thanks to the rise of CompromÃs with the powerful leadership of Mónica Oltra and Podem, a formation that was experiencing the best moment of the leadership of Pablo Iglesias. For eight years, within the PSPV there has been peace, at least relative. Institutional power had appeased old quarrels and, also, the generational drive of those who, precisely, did not experience that 1999 congress firsthand.
Ten days after the defeat of 28-M, not a few vocations have emerged voraciously to exercise control of the PSPV in the preparation of the lists for the general elections. With two directly confronting factions, one led by Carlos Fernández Bielsa, provincial secretary and who has the unanimous support of its organic structure, and the other by Ximo Puig, general secretary of the PSPV and acting president of the Generalitat Valenciana. Transferring a confrontational image that weakens the spirit of the militancy and damages the brand in the face of voters. In only ten days, the troops of both formations use the messages as ammunition and narrate their arguments and the logic of their decisions to the media, not so much to convince, but in some cases, to hurt the rival. The legitimacy of the party’s management bodies is ignored and appeals are made to higher levels if there is no solution: to Madrid, once again.
If we journalists who closely followed the PSPV’s journey through the desert, which lasted 20 years, two generations, two decades, learned anything, it is that in these wars there are no guilty or innocent; everyone can sin one thing or the other at what time. And that it delegitimizes a Valencian socialism that should make negotiation and consensus its weapon so as not to end up plunged, once again, into pessimism and even tragedy. Electoral defeats are always hard and difficult to manage, but adding to these the passion for generating wounds will only serve to make the dream of recovering orientation last longer, for the benefit of the right. The most surprising thing is that all this happens just a few weeks before an election in which the PSOE is at stake, in political terms, its future in Spain in the coming years. The lesson of the 1999 congress, and its consequences, should be learned by heart for everyone who wants to be part of the PSPV, now and in the future. Obviously to avoid such a situation.
