“I do not share a strategy in which notoriety is created through disagreement, I think that is not the way,” the first vice president of the Government and deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, warned the president of Castilla this Thursday. -La Mancha, the socialist Emiliano García-Page, who the day before stirred up the waters in the not always good socialist family avenue by triggering his public clash with Pedro Sánchez over the Amnesty law and the negotiations and agreements with the independence groups. The leadership of the PSOE, this time, chose to put its foot on the wall and respond forcefully to Page’s criticism, especially for calling into question a position of the party, in its opinion, “on the outskirts of the Constitution, on the verge of step on the constitutional border.”
After Minister Óscar Puente and the organization secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, responded publicly for the first time on Wednesday to these repeated criticisms by Page of the party’s official line – “The person who has been on the outskirts of the PSOE has been Page for “For quite some time,” Puente cried, “today it was María Jesús Montero, the highest organic representative of the formation along with Sánchez, who called the president of La Mancha to order. “The way forward is to be able together to stop the advance of the right and the extreme right that is blowing with such force throughout Europe,” Montero told Page. “We have no energy or effort to waste,” she said. And she has called on the president of La Mancha to do “a reflection.”
In the leadership of the PSOE, in any case, they are not considering applying disciplinary measures or opening any file against Page, and are limited, at least for now, to trusting that the wake-up call launched will have an effect to lower the level of the controversy. .
In this sense, today there is a new closing of ranks in the party to try to stop Page, and not give more ammunition to the right, with cascading statements. The still leader of the Valencian socialists, Ximo Puig, has defended that the Amnesty law is not “on the outskirts” of the Constitution, and has demanded “loyalty” to Page with the party. “It is important to know that at this time what is valued is the need to meet again and work together and not engage in confrontation,” said Puig. The organization secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, has acknowledged that he has not called or contacted Page, after the exchange of statements the day before, but has insisted that the party “is not outside” the Constitution. “Evidently,” he concluded.
The Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, has indicated for her part that the statements of the president of Castilla-La Mancha regarding the Amnesty law “are not what is best” neither for him nor “for the Socialist Party either.” Although from the Government also the Minister of Industry, Jordi Hereu, recently joined the PSOE executive, has recalled that this is “a plural party because it has broad borders”, and has pointed out that Page is “a magnificent president, very loved for its people”. “He seems like a great president to me. He is a person who freely expresses his opinions and it is evident that I do not agree with him in some analyses, but for me this does not diminish his personal appreciation and political assessment in any way,” highlighted Hereu, who in any case has defended the agenda. of reunion and coexistence in Catalonia as “a great priority of this Government.”
For a long time now, the president of Castilla-La Mancha and leader of the socialists in this federation, Emiliano García-Page, has assumed that he is in an absolute minority in the PSOE in his opposition to the official party line dictated by Pedro Sánchez. But Page always contrasts this loneliness in his formation with the incontestable absolute majority that he enjoys in Castilla-La Mancha, and that he revalidated in the regional elections of May 2023, which makes him the only socialist territorial leader. with such electoral power. Furthermore, the profile that Page exhibits, to differentiate himself from Sánchez and secure his support at the polls, is not a new strategy in the PSOE. His political godfather, José Bono, who presided over Castilla-La Mancha for 21 years, chaining absolute majorities, also built his profile and political leadership with the strength of the votes and marking distances with the dictates of Moncloa or Ferraz when he played, under the mandates of Felipe González and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, as the Andalusian Manuel Chaves and the Extremaduran Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra also did in their time as regional presidents. Not in vain, Bono, Chaves and Ibarra were called “the three tenors.” Now, and after another of the main voices critical of Sánchez, Javier Lambán, lost the presidency of Aragón after last year’s elections, Page has remained the only discordant voice of weight in the PSOE, but with institutional and organic power .
