Just one year ago, Pedro Sánchez managed to reunite former socialist government presidents Felipe González and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero at the federal reunification congress that the PSOE held in Valencia. And today, at the gates of a new decisive electoral cycle, the head of the Executive has reissued this photo of the socialist unit at the Ferraz headquarters in Madrid, together with his predecessors at the head of the general secretary of the PSOE -González, Zapatero and Joaquín Almunia, with Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba always in the memory – to inaugurate an exhibition that kicks off two weeks of acts and events on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the socialist electoral victory of 1982, and which will culminate on October 29 with a great rally in Seville.
“We feel heirs to your legacy,” Sánchez proclaimed to his predecessors, after warning that perhaps among the leaders of the right there is less interest in stirring up the recent past. “There are those who look back with fear, because they do not know what they are going to find, because they are terrified of meeting their past self, writing against the Constitution or defending the legacy of the Franco dictatorship,” he said. “But for us, looking at the past is an act of pride and brotherhood. We recognize ourselves in the work of those who preceded us and we feel heirs to your legacy”, he underlined. “We walk with the peace that comes from having a clear conscience, of having been on the right side of history,” he insisted. “Nobody else can say it in the political system of Spain”, he has settled.
“We recognize ourselves in the legacy of the best Spain, the one that was born from the socialist triumph of 1982”, Sánchez insisted, translating the “patriotism” that the socialists defend as “love for a plural and diverse Spain”.
But Sánchez did not want to “fall into complacency” or remain alone in the exercise of nostalgia that this commemoration of the first great socialist electoral victory of democracy entails. “Today we look at the past with the eyes of the present, and with a thirst for the future”, he highlighted. And despite the uncertainties of the moment, in the midst of the energy and inflationary crisis due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the leader of the PSOE has been blunt: “We are not afraid of challenges or challenges.” Where others see threats, he has ensured that socialists see opportunities. And, before González, Zapatero and Almunia, he assured: “That our work in the Government is the best tribute to your work for the country”.
Felipe González, who has spoken before Sánchez, has warned that despite the turbulence that he also had to face while he was President of the Government – ??26 and a half years ago he ceased to be, he has specified-, the current moment is “ extraordinarily difficult.” “The only predictable thing is the unpredictable”, he has pointed out. And he has once again trusted that great consensus could be achieved again, such as those that promoted the Moncloa pacts or the Constitution itself. “Politicians are providers of certainty, even when politicians do not have it,” he has prescribed. In addition, he has summoned Sánchez, like all the Moncloa tenants, to “take charge of the state of mind of the citizens whom you govern.” And he has insisted on calling for “a project that brings everyone together, that commits everyone, to move Spain forward”. This is what happened after the 1982 elections and his arrival in power, he has assured, when “Spanish society mobilized far beyond the borders of our votes, to commit to the future of our country”.
