Espadas reiterates his desire to be a candidate for the Junta de Andalucía before the provincial secretaries

The Andalusian PSOE is today a boiling party, dissatisfied after 9-J with its fourth consecutive electoral defeat since 2022, but there is no open congress calendar that allows for imminent replacements in the regional or provincial leadership, so “organic issues” will be resolved “when appropriate.” This was stated in a “resolution” by the general secretary of the Socialists of Andalusia, Juan Espadas, and the eight provincial general secretaries of the party after a meeting held at the regional headquarters. In that meeting, Espadas has not asked for the express support of local leaders, but he has told them that he “wants to be” a candidate for the presidency of the Board in 2026, according to socialist sources.

At the entrance to the meeting, journalists asked Espadas if the local leaders were coming to support him. “I to them and they to me, and to evaluate the results,” he replied. And three provincial secretaries – those of Seville, Granada and Almería – expressed their “absolute support” for the regional leader. But none of that is included in the “resolution”, because it would be like publicly acknowledging that Espadas is questioned by his own people and needs an explicit endorsement, given the requests for resignation from some socialist voices.

In the statement, the absence of self-criticism after losing the European Championships in the whole of Andalusia, in the eight provinces and in the eight capitals is absolute. The Andalusian leaders, who call themselves “the most responsible” of the Andalusian PSOE, highlight the 32.2% obtained in the European elections in Andalusia, “two points above the national average of votes for the PSOE, which represents almost 18% of the total, with 935,603 votes”; They emphasize that the PSOE “has only won” in Catalonia, Navarra and the Canary Islands “with lower percentages than ours”; They assure that it is the party with the most votes in 54% of the municipalities, “although it experiences some decline in rural areas and large municipalities in metropolitan areas”; and they accuse the PP of generating an “unbreathable” political environment with “perpetual harassment” of Pedro Sánchez.

Despite recognizing that the result of 9-J in Andalusia “is not what was desired”, they confirm “a solid electoral base” in the last three elections. And they state: “The recovery of the socialist vote since the 2022 regional elections, together with the fall in the PP vote, means that the distance currently between the two parties has gone from being between 43% of the PP and 24% of the PSOE of 2022, 37% of the PP and 32% of the PSOE in these last elections. That is, the difference is reduced from 19 to five points in two years.”

The “top officials” come to see a certain decline in the president of the Board, Juan Manuel Moreno, who has managed to make the PP win European elections for the first time in the most populated region of Spain. “The wear and tear of Moreno Bonilla as leader of the PP compared to other leaders in autonomous communities means that it is the only territory where, governing his party with an absolute majority, he does not reach 40% of the votes.”

After this analysis, the “conclusion” of the general secretaries as “it cannot be any other” is the following: “The need to reaffirm ourselves in the political project undertaken at the beginning of this autonomous legislature and to continue deepening and improving the work of the opposition and the mobilization of the entire party in local groups.”

Discontent in local groups

In the last paragraph of the “resolution” they address the internal situation in which they make it clear that the changes, if they occur, will be made when they are due. “The organic issues that may arise will be resolved in the party bodies and, when appropriate, in the respective congresses.”

In the eight local groups in Andalusia there are, with greater or lesser intensity (in Málaga it is a clamor), dissatisfied voices demanding relief at the top. This situation worsened after the 2023 municipal elections, when the PSOE lost not only the eight capitals, but also in many municipalities that allowed this party to govern in the councils, converted into oases of employment after the loss of the Junta de Andalucía in 2018. Of the six that governed, they now only do so in Seville and Jaén. The municipalities are where the biggest hole in the Andalusian PSOE is and the origin of the party’s demobilization, many leaders maintain.

Although Espadas assures that he wants to repeat as a candidate for the presidency of the Board, no one in the PSOE guarantees that this will be the case. “It is not known. There are people who believe that he can come back and others who don’t. There is a lot of internal polarization,” acknowledges a provincial leader.

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