“I cannot give up,” former minister José Luis Ábalos alleged yesterday. Thus he consummated his break with Pedro Sánchez, by disobeying the express mandate of the PSOE executive, who on Monday ordered him to resign within 24 hours from his position as deputy in Congress to assume “political responsibility” for the murky scandal of alleged corruption in which his personal assistant, Koldo García, is accused.

After keeping the PSOE leadership in suspense until the deadline of the ultimatum to surrender his seat was exhausted and exceeded, Ábalos appeared in Congress to refute the party’s resolution and announce that he maintains his parliamentary record: “I have decided to move to the mixed group.”

Given this decision, the PSOE executive immediately issued an urgent resolution, opening a disciplinary file and provisionally suspending Ábalos from militancy. The “very serious faults” noted by Ferraz in the former minister’s decision, by failing to comply with the mandate of the federal executive and going with his seat to the mixed group of Congress, lead him, ultimately and after the open internal procedure, to expulsion. of the PSOE.

This break represents a commotion between the leadership and the socialist militancy, already in full uncertainty due to the complex course of the legislature. Not in vain, and as Ábalos himself recalled yesterday in his emotional farewell to the socialist parliamentary group, his role as organizational secretary of the PSOE was key to mending a fractured party after the 2017 primaries that returned leadership to Sánchez, to manage to take him to Moncloa in 2018 and to form the first progressive coalition government in Spain, in 2020.

Ábalos, in fact, seemed to adopt yesterday the same manual of resistance that Sánchez adopted after being defenestrated by the entire PSOE establishment in 2016 and once again fighting to regain the leadership of the party, in the wings of militancy. “I feel like I face everything, I come alone in my car, I don’t have a secretary, I don’t have anyone behind me or next to me. “I face all the political power, from one side and the other, and I have to do it alone,” he highlighted.

In his case, however, everything indicates that he is embarking on a path of no return.

The former minister, in his appearance, wanted to defend his honorability and personal reputation and as a deputy “to the last consequences”, to justify “the most important decision of my political life.” He insisted that he is not giving up, since “I am not accused of anything nor do I have any illicit enrichment.” “I have no need to invoke the principle of presumption of innocence,” he stressed.

Ábalos bitterly regretted the lack of camaraderie and that the PSOE leadership left him in the lurch. “I would never have imagined myself outside of these acronyms,” he acknowledged.

But he refuted Ferraz’s demand that he leave his seat. “If I resigned, it would be interpreted as a sign of guilt, which I do not assume. It would only cause my stigmatization, not just political, but personal,” he assured. And he warned that he would not stop “the hunt” of the PP, which is already targeting other ministers and leaders of the PSOE. He thus rejected a decision that, in his opinion, would only serve to “pay tribute to the right.” However, he assumed the consequences of their breakup, jumping into the mixed group: “I know what a political stinker is.” He already was, for example, by accompanying Sánchez in the fight to regain control of the PSOE.

Ábalos insisted that his “is not a comfortable decision, it is very hard and very difficult personally.” But he justified it forcefully: “I cannot end my political career and my career as a corrupt person, when I am innocent.” And he hoped that one day the leadership of the PSOE would recognize him. “I hope to see the end of this game, forcing those who now intend to throw me out on the street, through the back door, to have to look me in the face,” he challenged.

Ábalos’s departure causes an earthquake in the PSOE. But in Moncloa and Ferraz they agree that it will not alter the course of the legislature if the socialist group loses a seat – now only 120 – and that the former minister is squeezed into the mixed group together with the deputies of Podemos, the Canary Coalition, the BNG and UPN. “Everyone will vote with the PSOE,” they say. They don’t have a single vote left, much less Ábalos’s.