“I’m not going to beat around the bush,” warned the first vice president of the Government and deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero. “It is necessary to start with a resounding message: President, stay. Peter, stay. “We are with you!” Montero stressed when launching the meeting of the PSOE federal committee that is being held this Saturday in Ferraz, in an atmosphere of shock and uncertainty. Tens of thousands of militants and sympathizers, according to the organization and 12,500 attendees according to the Government Delegation, are concentrated in the street, at the gates of Ferraz, in support of a president of the Government and leader of the PSOE for the first time absent from the event. .
Such unrest and unrest has not been remembered, inside and at the doors of the PSOE federal headquarters in Ferraz, since October 1, 2016, when the most convulsive federal committee of the party culminated in the defenestration of Sánchez and his resignation as general secretary. This Saturday the federal committee, the highest body of the party between congresses, is meeting again at the socialist headquarters, but with an intention diametrically opposite to that of eight years ago. The objective, now, is to try to prevent at all costs that Sánchez resigns as President of the Government, in the face of the “harassment and demolition operation” of the right against his wife, Begoña Gómez. A crowd of militants and sympathizers gather early in the morning in front of the PSOE headquarters, despite the rain and cold, demanding that Sánchez not surrender. “They are not going to be able to break us,” assured the president of the federal committee, Milagros Tolón, at the beginning of the conclave.
In the absence of Sánchez, Montero has been in charge of opening the federal committee with a political report focused on support for the President of the Government and his wife. “We have to move forward and continue pushing this country forward. “Spain cannot go back,” the first vice president warned. If the president announces his resignation next Monday, she will take over as acting. “We want you to continue being our president,” Montero claimed to Sánchez. “President, we are with you,” she insisted.
Montero also referred in his speech to the information revealed today by La Vanguardia, according to which the Popular Party already used former commissioner Villarejo in 2014 to spy on Sánchez’s family. “Now we know that the dirty war against Pedro Sánchez began ten years ago, when this organization elected him as general secretary,” highlighted the vice president. Montero has considered former president José María Aznar as “spiritual leader of the right and the extreme right”, and Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal as “his best disciples”, in the task of “spreading mud.” “They can’t get away with this!” the socialist leader has demanded.
“We cannot allow Spain to go backwards. What’s more, we are not going to allow Spain to regress,” Montero assured. And he has denounced the strategy of “insidiousness and hoaxes” of “a savage extreme right and a complicit and cowardly right.”
“Today, always, with you, president,” Montero insisted. And he has also sent a message of support to Sánchez’s wife. “Begoña, partner, we are all with you, all of us,” he supported. The mention of the president’s wife has provoked a round of applause from the federal committee, with all its members standing. “Begoña is a modern, professional and independent woman,” said the vice president. “Enough of this harassment!” she demanded. “It is worth continuing to move forward. President, yes, it is worth it for the good guys to win,” she concluded, to great applause.
Next, Eneko Andueza, Salvador Illa, Teresa Ribera, Óscar Puente, or the three regional presidents of the PSOE took the floor: Adrián Barbón, María Chivite and Emiliano García-Page. All, to transfer their support to Sánchez and conspire against the offensive of the right. One of the most anticipated interventions has been that of Page, since the president of Castilla-La Mancha is the greatest critical voice of Sánchez among the socialist territorial leaders. Page has assured that the President of the Government has “all my empathy.” Given the “personal manifestation of pain” expressed by Sánchez in his letter to the citizens, he highlighted: “Pedro, you are going to count on my support.” “A false complaint cannot bring down a president of the Government,” Page has warned.
The president of Castilla-La Mancha, true to his style, has been “very indignant”, mainly, with the Catalan independence movement. “One of the things that has bothered me the most in recent days is seeing how, in the face of a personal manifestation of pain, is the number of people, mainly the usual radicals, who make fun,” Page warned. “Like having to put up with Illa’s alternative, who wants to be an alternative in Catalonia, saying that he leaves home crying,” he criticized Junts. “And that’s what someone who left Spain on the hood of a car says!” Page denounced, referring to Carles Puigdemont.
After his intervention, the secretary of organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, took the floor, choosing to interrupt the development of the federal committee. “It is time for us to go out into the streets and shout to our Secretary General that it is worth it,” he announced. All the members of the socialist conclave then went out to the doors of Ferraz, to join the concentration of militants and sympathizers. With a unanimous cry against the right: “They will not pass!”
