“These cries had to be heard in Moncloa”, confided some socialist leaders in front of the crowd of militants and supporters who gathered at the gates of Ferraz, at noon yesterday, who demanded that Pedro Sánchez not resign as to president of the Spanish Government. “Pedro, stay!”, shouted the street, where the PSOE federal committee ended with kisses, hugs and tears.
The first vice-president of the Spanish Government and deputy general secretary of the PSOE, the Sevillian María Jesús Montero – called to assume the leadership of the acting Executive if Sánchez announces his resignation tomorrow Monday – melted into an embrace with those gathered in front of the party’s federal headquarters in Madrid, chanting the same slogans.
Like other ministers, who couldn’t help but cry with emotion in view of the imperious demand of grassroots militancy: “Pedro, don’t abandon us!”.
The distance between Carrer de Ferraz and Palau de la Moncloa, where Sánchez lives, is just three kilometers. Too much, in any case, so that the claim of socialist militancy could be heard from there, the same one that returned the reins of the party to Sánchez in June 2017, after having been defenestered by the entire PSOE eight establishment months before
But surely the echo of the demand clearly reached the president, wherever he is. “We hope it helps him make a decision”, they concluded in Ferraz, while keeping their fingers crossed waiting to hear, on Monday, Sánchez’s “verdict” on his future, and that of this uncertain current legislature.
“President, stay. Pedro, stay. We are with you!” This was the “resounding message” with which Montero, in the absence of Sánchez for the first time in his intense mandates, began the speech before the federal committee, in an atmosphere of shock and uncertainty while thousands of militants and sympathizers they had gathered at the gates of Ferraz since the early hours of the morning, despite the rain and the cold.
We did not remember so much agitation and restlessness, inside and outside the headquarters of the PSOE, since October 1, 2016, when the most turbulent federal committee ended up forcing the resignation of Sánchez as secretary general, for refusing to invest Mariano Rajoy and try to build an alternative government majority, unthinkable at that time for the living forces of the PSOE.
The meeting of the party’s highest decision-making body between congresses yesterday, on the other hand, had an intention diametrically opposed to that of eight years ago. The objective now is to try to prevent Sánchez from resigning as president, due to the “systematic harassment operation” of the right against his wife, Begoña Gómez.
“They will not be able to bend us”, said the president of the federal committee, Milagros Tolón. “Spain cannot go back, we must move forward and continue to push this country”, continued the Deputy Secretary General, María Jesús Montero, who insisted on conveying a message to Sánchez: “We want you to continue to be our president”. And he denounced the strategy of “insidies and blunders” of “a wild ultra-right and a complicit and cowardly right”. “Yes, it’s worth it for the good guys to win”, he emphasized. Montero also conveyed a message of support to the president’s wife: “Begoña, comrade, we are all with you, all”, he shouted, and the federal committee, on its feet, erupted in applause.
Then the round of interventions continued, among the twenty that were planned. The Basque Eneko Andueza urged Sánchez to hold on to win this battle, and he referred both to the socialists who “died in the ditches or suffered repression and exile”, and to those who “we had to look under the cars and look back to see our relatives because we didn’t know if we would see them again”, during the hardest years of ETA.
The Catalan Salvador Illa, the next to appear in front of the polls on 12- M, made a call to “raise a collective resistance”. And they also took the floor Teresa Ribera, head of the PSOE poster for the European elections; the minister Óscar Puente, and the three regional socialist presidents: Adrián Barbón, María Chivite and Emiliano García-Page.
The latter, president of Castile-La Mancha and the main voice critical of Sánchez among the territorial leaders, also conveyed his support. “A false complaint cannot bring down a Prime Minister”, he warned. Page also showed his indignation with Carles Puigdemont, for “making fun” of Sánchez by warning him that “he leaves home crying”. “And who says that who left home and Spain on the hood of a car!”, he said.
The organizing secretary, Santos Cerdán, then interrupted the conclave and the pending speaking turns, to go all out into the street to meet with the militancy. With a unanimous cry in front of the right: “They won’t pass!”
