It is good that Alejando Soler and Carlos Ferández Bielsa have decided to take a step back and give their support to Diana Morant to form a single candidacy for the extraordinary congress of the PSPV. Solution that avoids an organic process of confrontation, primaries, and offers guarantees of a peaceful renewal of Ximo Puig’s leadership. It is surprising, however, that the solution had to be adopted in Madrid, within walking distance of the AVE, under the tutelage of Santos Cerdá, since the autonomy of a party that has always claimed its “federal soul” is thus questioned. If the solution is adequate, the methodology used is not the most exemplary.
It is also not a good sign that the three candidates have not been able to reach the long-awaited agreement in Valencia: they have done so just 24 hours after they formalized their candidacies in an office at the PSOE headquarters. Two of them appealed to the militancy to decide who should be the winner, and they worked hard to build their argument. What happened for Soler and Bielsa to accept the agreement when for weeks they had refused to establish the pact with Morant? Was Ferraz’s direct intervention necessary? Did you doubt your results in possible primaries?
In the last few hours, Soler and Bielsa have demanded that Morant have compensation for his support in the distribution of power in the future PSPV executive, with no small amount of tension. It is logical; Well, it is the price of his refusal to fight. But this negotiation cannot be projected as a kind of hidden “primaries”; That is to say, the future government of the Valencian federation means maintaining tension between the families who want to control the party. This situation has already been experienced in the past in the PSPV and the results were disastrous, causing resignations of general secretaries (case of Joan Romero) or eternal internal disputes that prevented opposition political action and perpetuated the permanence of the Valencian socialists outside the PSPV. governance of institutions. If so, the intended pacification of the “Madrid Pact” would be falsely concluded, giving way to a situation that would prevent Diana Morant from exercising its leadership with guarantees. The danger exists.
With Ximo Puig, the Valencian federation had acquired a more “Girondine” tone compared to the markedly “Jacobin” character of a party, the PSOE, which for too many years has left its “federal” vocation aside, despite the fact that this objective is part of his political project. What happened last Tuesday in Ferraz with the PSPV confirms, at last, a centralization of political dynamics that, in the Spanish case, means taking away decision-making capacity from the federations. It would be childish to believe that these interferences have not existed before; They have always been present in the history of the PSOE and the PSPV. But perhaps what has changed are the forms, which in politics emphasize management models. At least, as was learned yesterday, the three parties will continue their negotiations in Valencia, not in Ferraz.
Diana Morant, who has the support of Pedro Sánchez and Ximo Puig, faces the challenge of replacing the leadership of the former president to try to recover the Generalitat Valenciana, lost on March 28 due to the defeat of the left. She will have to cleverly combine, and it will not be easy, acting as Government Minister and opposition leader to the PP and Vox executive chaired by Carlos Mazón. That is, defending Valencian interests, the Valencian way demanded for years by Ximo Puig, while being a member of the executive that makes decisions that affect Valencians. The best news of all this is, without a doubt, that a woman is at the head of the second Spanish federation.
