The methodology and deadlines that had been offered to relieve Ximo Puig as head of the PSPV and seek a quick solution of consensus and unity that avoids a confrontational scenario have been altered. On December 17, the still general secretary of the second Spanish socialist federation announced that he was taking a step back.
That same day, the objective of holding, in the shortest possible time, an extraordinary congress was moved, preferably at the end of February. Those were the deadlines. And days later, a certain harmony was evident between Puig and the national leadership of the PSOE so that the Minister of Science and Universities, the Valencian Diana Morant, was the person called to lead the PSPV. That was the methodology.
Neither deadlines nor methodology. Because on Friday the PSPV executive that should have been held yesterday to convene the National Committee that must set a date for the congress was called off. Now it is announced that it will be next Monday, January 15. The problem? That there is, at the moment, no consensus. Because in the PSPV the provincial barons of Valencia and Alicante, Carlos Fernández Bielsa and Alejandro Soler, also want to lead the party and do not quite accept the forms for the “tutelage” that, according to what they say, Ferraz wants to impose on the Valencian organic process.
Diana Morant will hardly agree to enter into an organic battle if there is previously no agreement between the Valencian socialist families that prevents, for example, holding primaries. Would Diana Morant risk a competition in which she could be defeated while also being a minister in the Government of Pedro Sánchez? At the moment, that agreement is still far from being forged.
The initial rush has disappeared and it seems that some want to buy time. First in the deadlines. Last week Ximo Puig expressed the discomfort of holding the extraordinary congress in a climate of Galician elections. But Puig’s rival sectors consider that this is an excuse, that what is intended is to buy time to try to convince Alejandro Soler and Carlos Fernández Bielsa not to present a candidacy.
Some voices say that the congress could be delayed for weeks, or even months; in a sequence that does not really know who benefits. The head of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, announced yesterday that the congress of the Valencian federation will be held in the first quarter of this year. This will was also highlighted by the Valencian socialist executive. We will see.
The method is also in question. The rival families believe that an agreement between Pedro Sánchez and Ximo Puig to elect Diana Morant is not valid, at least if what they demand is not taken into account. “The numbers do not favor Diana,” these sources point out, convinced that in the event of a confrontation anything can happen. More so in a federation where there are wounds that have never completely healed.
The problem, sources from all the families acknowledge to this newspaper, is that if confrontation is chosen, the PSPV runs the risk of settling into permanent crisis, as happened in 1995. What would be the best news for Carlos’s PP Mazón, who governs the Generalitat Valenciana with Vox.
On the other occasion, the crisis lasted 20 years, and was seasoned with many political corpses. Could it happen again? If the deadlines and the method fail, everything is possible in Valencian socialism.
