Postmodern politics requires dealing with a wealth of contradictions. Own and others. You have to navigate in an ocean where every day a storm rises. No one expects any ruler to exercise the disciplined art of coherence, but the degree of credibility of any public narrative fabricated to conquer –or retain– power, what political scientists call narrative, requires talent –as well as a lot of waist– to conceal when making a foreshortening or recanting without self-harm.
It is not, of course, the case of the PSOE in Andalusia, located on one of the fronts of the 28M battle, a prelude to the general elections at the end of 2023. The southern socialists, whom the polls do not smile on and the polls place in a waning position in the face of the trance of the municipal ones, they have been a little over four years, since they lost the Board at the end of 2018, trying to articulate an opposition strategy that allows them to return to the Quirinale de San Telmo or, failing that, become alternative to the (warm) Andalusian style of Moreno Bonilla.
Either way. They have not achieved either of these things. The June elections showed that his stage in the opposition is not going to be circumstantial, but rather a new Middle Ages. The imminent elections in May should clear up the question of whether they are in a trance of (internal) implosion or are experiencing a decline similar to that of the Roman Empire, which lasted for centuries.
Edward Gibbon, the best chronicler of that sinking, said that “the winds and waves are always on the side of the most expert navigators.” From which it follows that, in addition to lacking a different project than the mere replica of an accomplished past, the socialists of the South need a new leader to rescue them from the well. The stage of Juan Espadas, Ferraz’s man in Andalusia, seems more than amortized before even having started.
Whether it lasts until this spring or continues until the beginning of next winter is a scenic element: the PSOE will no longer be relevant in Andalusia, and influential in the state political war, which is not limited to the geometry of political brands, but rather it includes the territories, until it plays a melody that conjures conservative hegemony.
Why don’t the socialists raise their heads in Andalusia? The reasons are multiple. Of course, the environmental factor has an influence –Moreno Bonilla has established himself in the Quirinale– and also the changing electoral trends –the decline of the PSOE and the (limited) rise of the PP–, although along with these two circumstances it is worth mentioning a third issue: the historical. And it is main. Without it, the incapacity of the PSOE in the South cannot be understood.
The submission of the Andalusian socialists to Ferraz, the antithesis of what has been their own public identity for the last forty years, did not begin with Espadas. She comes from further back, although perhaps it was not so visible until that cold December 2018, a constellation of planets caused Susana Díaz to enter the (definitive) eclipse phase.
The former head of the Socialists of the South, candidate for the top of the ancien régime socialism party, ephemeral godmother of Pedro Sánchez before becoming his adversary, handed over the autonomy of the Andalusian group to the President of the Government after failing in the primaries.
This submission (tactic) of Díaz delayed the organic renewal of the Andalusian PSOE by two years, caught between a hostile state leadership and some leaders (the susánidas) incapable of acclimatizing to the emerging sanchista imperium. When César de la Moncloa decided that the time was up – the June 2021 primaries – the damage had become irreversible.
Moreno Bonilla had not only seized all the levers of regional power, but also took advantage of the lack of a specific political profile of his own among the Socialists, mired in a prolonged interim period, to become the dominant axis of regional politics.
His victory on 19J, with an absolute majority thanks to the transfer of socialist votes that were fleeing the fear that Vox would enter San Telmo, has institutionalized the situation. The president of the Board, a hypothetical replacement to close the passage from Genoa to Ayuso if Feijóo fails to succeed this December, has become a benchmark at the state level. His socialist adversary in Andalusia, on the other hand, is a simple territorial pawn of Sánchez. Dissimilar hierarchies.
The Espadas solution, calibrated above all by internal factors, arrived late. Its consummation, except to bury Díaz (institutionally), the bet of the patriarchs, has been absolutely sterile. In this failure, which perhaps is the omen of what can happen in the general elections, the personality –seguidista– of the current Sanchismo ambassador in Andalusia counts for a lot. But the transcendent factor is not personal. It is a matter of substance. Of a narrative weakness that, at the gates of 28M, continues unresolved.
The Gospel of Saint Matthew warns of the danger of giving alms and, at the same time, taking pride in granting pious perks. Charity must be exercised in private, at the risk of appearing insincere and offending the recipients. Whoever helps a needy person – that is, an electorate punished by inflation, the increase in mortgages and the price of the shopping basket – is not seen as a naive soul, but as a vain (interested).
The Andalusian PSOE is incapable of understanding that its criticism of the president of the Junta will not fall on fertile ground as long as it does not mark distances or knows how to make profitable its supposed ascendance against Moncloa with facts, achievements and certain results. The strategy of the Socialists, on the other hand, is defensive: it limits itself to praising sanchismo tooth and nail – which includes initiatives from Podemos such as the law of yes is yes – without changing a comma of Ferraz’s arguments.
The right hand of the PSOE, to continue with the biblical simile, knows everything that the left does. And vice versa. That is why part of its mayors and presidents of deputations, the front line of the 28M, fear the (nuclear) impact that the dripping reductions in sentences among those convicted of sexual abuse and assault would have on the progressive electorate. A storm whose rain is not fine at all and that endangers the options of the Andalusian socialists to endure the next two electoral challenges with some dignity.
San Telmo has made it known this week that 56 victims of sexual abuse whose perpetrators have seen their sentences reduced receive “psychological assistance” at the Institute for Women in Andalusia (IAM). The Quirinale, who need a solid win in the spring in order not to disappoint their expectations and pave the way for Feijóo’s hypothetical arrival at Moncloa, are going to play their cards to the full in this war. The Socialists, meanwhile, instead of praying in secret and attenuating social incomprehension in the face of a law that could end up taking them by storm, boast of the infinite purity of heart of Sanchismo. Així no hi ha cap way.