What does the PSOE want to be like in the (immediate?) future? The question is timely at a time when this party is suffering enormous pressure due to the possible negotiation with Junts of an amnesty to invest Pedro Sánchez as president of the Government. The situation has allowed us to visualize the different “souls” of the main political force of Spanish social democracy, which Enric Juliana recently accurately summarized in a tweet: “There is a coastal PSOE, an interior PSOE and the previous PSOE.”
A coastal, Mediterranean PSOE, with a Girondin soul, federalist, to which we should add the PSC, the PSPV, the PSM and, due to its recent positions, the Andalusian Socialist Party, PSA, the largest federation, once key in the socialist strategy in Spain and today very weakened, as Carlos Mármol pointed out this week. The “internal” PSOE is now almost non-existent in Madrid, a place where in the past it had a lot of muscle and influence in the federal leadership. It also has enormous difficulties in Extremadura and its role is almost marginal in Castilla-León. Then, as Juliana says, there is a previous PSOE, exemplified this week with the intervention of the founding fathers González-Guerra, delighted to offer food to the right in their criticism of the intentions of Pedro Sánchez, with territorial allies such as García-Page. The “internal” and “previous” PSOE agree on one thing, both have a Jacobin soul.
Other federations (Basque, Navarre or Galician) have their own sensitivities, but it is not risky to conclude that the geographical axis that for decades has marked the strategic orientation of the PSOE, which were the federations of Bilbao, Madrid and Seville (with the collaboration of Extremadura and José Bono), has been blurred, has lost the ability to manage the compass of Spanish socialism. There was a moment, in the times of Pasqual Maragall, around 1997, when there was a clear attempt to build a peripheral, federal axis, with the PSC (the only party independent of the PSOE), the PSPV of Joan Romero, the PSM, PSG and the Canarian socialists.
Of the three PSOE mentioned, only one has positioned itself next to Pedro Sánchez, the “litoral” PSOE, with all its consequences (the Navarrese and Basque socialists are very attentive). It has also been a constant since the socialist leader became president of the Government: PSC, PSPV and PSM did not hesitate to defend dialogue with Catalonia or pardons. It is the socialism that is helping the most to create bridges with the “nationalist” peripheries and to maintain internal discipline in the face of organic rupturist impulses, which exist and threaten confrontation if, if necessary, Sánchez does not achieve his objective. Has the Mediterranean PSOE found a great opportunity to underline a vision of the territorial debate far from the “Jacobinism” that has been the norm in the main party of the Spanish left?
Juan Espadas, and even more so Ximo Puig, Francina Armengol and Salvador Illa are the leaders who represent a Girondino PSOE, with the will to believe in another way of understanding Spain, more plural, federal, in line with the “granada declaration”, document which once signed was kept in the drawer and which could now be reread with some interest. Does this mean that Pedro Sánchez has allowed himself to be seduced by federalism? This is more difficult to believe, because since he became general secretary he has evaded the political culture of the party: he does not consult the federal bodies (committee and executive) and appeals directly to militancy. He has surpassed the historical federal governance mechanisms of the PSOE. It is an unprecedented change in the history of the party; but that’s enough for another article, or several.
Whatever happens in the process towards Sánchez’s investiture, whether it is achieved or failed, the PSOE will never be the same. Many wounds have been opened, and the elections of 23-J also clarified, geographically, the relationship of forces and weights in a party that inevitably, conditioned by the events of September, has opened an internal debate that involves the vision that Spain faces right-wing parties that advocate giving strength to centralism, in all its breadth. There is more depth to this issue than the headlines make it seem.
The Mediterranean, coastal PSOE has, for this reason, a unique opportunity to support a different reading of how social democracy must fit in a Spain determined to be plural. The Girondists can, in this “historical moment” as some already define it, modify the Jacobin vision that has marked the framework of reflection of the Spanish socialists; framework that, by the way, who benefits the most is, precisely, the right. The question is what will finally be, between “Jacobins” and “Girondins”, the position that Sánchez, the most “presidential” leader that the PSOE has ever had, will finally adopt.
