It had been a decade since José Antonio Griñán had left his house to attend a public event of the PSOE. The former Andalusian president reappeared this Saturday at the party’s 41st federal Congress, which is being held this weekend in Seville. Griñán has been supported by his people, entertained and photographed a thousand times, until he has sat in the front row between his predecessor, Manuel Chaves, and his successor, Susana Díaz.
The presence of Chaves and Griñán in this conclave, reported by elDiario.es, is more than a symbolism, more than a revulsion for the party. The PSOE rescues, honors and praises before the almost thousand socialist delegates those who were everything in the party and in the Government of Andalusia, during 37 uninterrupted years in power.
The last 14 years they have suffered political ostracism as a result of the long judicial process of the ERE fraud, which ended with the conviction of both in the Supreme Court: the first was disqualified for ten years from holding public office for a crime of malfeasance, The second was also sentenced to six years in prison for embezzlement.
The convicted former presidents and the rest of the advisors and senior officials of their governments appealed to the Constitution, which before the summer provisionally annulled the Supreme Court’s rulings, and returned the case to the Provincial Court of Seville to issue a new ruling. The ERE case has not ended, now a new court – made up of the same judges and different ones – will review the instruction taking into account the reservations raised by the Constitutional Court.
But in this impasse, the PSOE, the two former Andalusian presidents and the rest of the convicted former leaders have shaken off the ignominy, the “great desolation”, the shame and the rage. The former minister Magdalena Álvarez, the former counselor Carmen Martínez Aguayo – a year in prison – and Chaves himself came out in a rush, after the ruling of the guarantee court, to denounce that they were victims of a “political and judicial hunt”, commanded by the PP . Chaves also finished the story by assuring that today Juan Manuel Moreno would not be president of Andalusia without this “judicial siege”, without this “lawfare”.
That is why its reappearance at the 41st Federal Congress of the PSOE in Seville does not only serve to heal wounds from the past, because it is fully current. Because the socialists today use the example of Chaves and Griñán to explain what is happening to them in the courts these days, the “judicial siege” against the president of the Government and general secretary of the party, Pedro Sánchez, his wife, his brother and leaders. of the socialist leadership today dotted with judicial suspicions, still to be resolved.
“I want to recognize these colleagues for justice: Thank you Manolo, thank you Pepe, Carmen, Magdalena, Miguel Ángel,” said the president of the 41st Congress and host of the conclave, Juan Espadas, standing up to the former Andalusian presidents and the entire plenary session, which they received with long applause.
In 2015, when Susana Díaz was president of the Board and leader of the PSOE-A, the two former Andalusian presidents were ordered to abandon their public positions and hand over their party membership cards – where they had been active since late Francoism – after being accused of corruption, that is, , before the procedural moment established by the PSOE ethical code: the opening of the oral trial.
This Saturday the three sat together, in the front row, in a socialist conclave that will crown Pedro Sánchez and aims to rearm the party in one of the most difficult political moments in its history since the restoration of democracy.
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