Pedro Sánchez vindicates his government without nuances and urges the PSOE not to give up: “Victory is possible”

In his most difficult federal committee since he arrived at La Moncloa, Pedro Sánchez worked hard this Saturday to inject the 300 members of the main decision-making body of the PSOE with the conviction that “victory is possible” in the general elections on 23 July, despite the severe blow caused by the municipal and regional elections of 28-M, a fateful night for the Socialists in which, without expecting it, they lost almost all their institutional power. The party was still digesting that result – it will retain only three of the nine communities it presided over – when the modification of the electoral lists of the territories for the general elections, in which Ferraz intervened on Friday without prior notice, set fire to spirits. “The history of the PSOE is a collective task where the general interest must prevail”, Sánchez emphasized to quell the internal noise, in a speech in which he has not made the slightest self-criticism for the electoral results and has vindicated without nuances the work of his Government: “We have done what had to be done. We have an exceptional balance sheet on the table”, he stated in an open speech.

In his final statement, already behind closed doors, Sánchez has conveyed a message of confidence in the victory that has raised the entire federal committee, according to several of the attendees consulted by EL PAÍS: “We have climbed 8,000 meters every day in these five years and I do not see an atmosphere of change. One day I will stop being President of the Government, but not on July 23 ”, he said. “Things are said here”, he has also affirmed, alluding to the reproaches of some of the barons.

The two most critical territorial leaders of the PSOE —Emiliano García-Page, president of Castilla-La Mancha, and Javier Lambán, from Aragón, one of the great defeats on 28-M— have not attended the federal committee, which despite the storm previously approved the lists, by show of hands, unanimously. Lambán has shown his anger on social networks: “The socialists of Zaragoza and Teruel democratically prepared magnificent candidacies for Congress and the Senate. I am very sorry that citizens will not have the opportunity to vote for them”. García-Page, the only one of the barons who revalidated the absolute majority on 28-M, did not rule out attending, but has finally decided to be absent. García-Page forced the PSOE on Friday to rectify the change that the federal list commission intended to make in the province of Toledo, where it was going to relegate Sergio Gutiérrez, Organization Secretary of the PSOE of Castilla-La Mancha, to second place, and put Milagros Tolón, mayoress of Toledo, as head of the list.

The discomfort over the modification of the electoral lists also reigned among declared sanchistas such as Luis Tudanca, general secretary of the PSOE of Castilla y León, or the still mayor of Valladolid, Óscar Puente, who has not attended the conclave either. Finally, all those notable absences —Adrián Barbón, the president of Asturias, had reserved the date for a friend’s wedding for months— have greatly reduced the tension that preceded the federal committee, where, in the closed-door debate, 21 leaders have asked for the floor. All have appealed to the closing of ranks and to cast the rest on 23-J. Tolón, president of the federal committee, has given way to Sánchez asking for unity and that “no one lends himself to playing the useful fool of the right”, in a reference that many present have understood to be directed at critical barons. The federal committee, despite the expectation that preceded it, has only lasted three hours, another proof of the closing ranks despite the turbulence and internal discrepancies on account of the lists.

“Once again, the decisive hour arrives. And the progress of Spain will depend on our electoral victory. The first thing I want to tell you is that victory is possible”, Sánchez has turned to raising spirits in the midst of a rather dire atmosphere. “The great responsibility for what happens on July 23 falls on us, on the socialists.” To reinforce this message that nothing is written, the PSOE general secretary has celebrated that the agreement between Sumar and Podemos has been fulfilled, the first condition that was necessary, according to all the surveys, so as not to rule out in advance the reissue of the Executive of lefts in La Moncloa. “On May 28 there was a concentration of the conservative vote around only two forces and a strong dispersion of the vote to our left. For this reason, precisely for this reason, the agreement announced yesterday is more than positive news. Unity is a first sign of responsibility because it avoids uselessly dispersing energy. And responsibility is the condition for leaving sterile noise behind and concentrating on what really matters to the public”, Sánchez stressed in a speech in which he pointed out the errors of others but did not mention the result of the PSOE, which lost 400,000 votes and its main communities and town halls.

Along the same lines, the socialist leader has claimed the leading role of the PSOE and has stressed that the responsibility of not allowing Spain to have a government of PP and Vox is “non-transferable” from the socialists. And at all times it has been addressed not so much to the left-wing electorate as to a “social majority” that, “vote what you vote”, supports, in his opinion, the great bets of the PSOE to “improve Spain”, the fight against climate change to economic measures.

The flag of an economy “that is going like a motorcycle” and that is not “stalled” —as Alberto Núñez Feijóo says— and the “impeccable” management in a legislature marked by the pandemic and the rise in prices due to the war in Ukraine have It has been and will be the trick that Sánchez will play to try for re-election on 23-J. “We have done what had to be done, we have literally left our skin, we have to claim this service sheet, today more than ever”, he reiterated. “We have an exceptional balance on the table, we have everything. [PP y Vox] They don’t want to talk about economics because they don’t know what to say. All they can think of is babbling old recipes. We have a plan and they have nothing. We have Nadia and they have no one ”, she stressed, claiming the first vice president. “When time proves us right, it becomes clear that the only unreal and ghostly thing is the economic alternative of the PP. As unreal as it does not exist”, he added, highlighting the growth forecast of 2.1% for this year, one of the lowest inflation rates in the EU or the 20.8 million Social Security affiliates.

The discordant voice has been put by Luis Tudanca, one of the territorial leaders closest to Sánchez. The general secretary of the PSOE of Castilla y León, who has been much tougher upon his arrival than inside according to sources present, has manifested himself at the gates of Ferraz “enormously disappointed and outraged” with the changes in the lists of Valladolid and Ávila that The federal commission of lists approved on Friday without taking into account the criteria of the second federation that gave the most deputies to the PSOE in 2019. “I am disappointed, but this country has a lot at stake. The most important thing is that and we are going to use ourselves forcefully to prevent a government like that of the PP and Vox in Castilla y León from passing again ”, Tudanca asserted, who later, in the federal committee, closed his intervention with his unequivocal support to Sánchez: “We are going to leave our skin to win the next elections with the lists that are approved by this federal committee.” . Óscar Puente, mayor of Valladolid, who was planning to intervene, did not attend the meeting. Sources from the regional leadership explain that “it was the best” given his anger. Puente is one of the leaders who has always been by Sánchez’s side.

Ximo Puig, who on May 28 lost the Government of the Valencian Community although the number of votes and seats increased, has been much more temperate than Tudanca, despite the discomfort that the changes introduced by Ferraz in the lists to Congress and the Senate. “Whoever makes the decision on the lists has to explain it,” Puig limited himself to saying at the entrance of the federal committee, in which he stressed, however, that he attended the conclave to “support Pedro Sánchez so that he can be President of the Government in decisive elections”. “I come with a positive spirit. Who is going to decide my future are the Valencians. I have a very clear conscience having complied with the values ​​of socialism, linked to humility and not pride, solidarity and not narcissism ”, he concluded in terms that some have interpreted as a message to his internal adversaries . Then, already in the federal committee, he has supported Sánchez and his candidacy on 23-J without acrimony: “This is a majority project that should aspire to be a majority where appropriate. We only have one way out: to be the first party in the country”. “The question is not so much how to beat the right, but how to convince the Spanish. Having said that, our adversaries would do well not to underestimate us: we are a party that does not back down”, the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, seconded him.