Politics runs through the veins of Juan Lobato (Madrid, 1984), the leader of the Madrid PSOE until Wednesday. His father, of the same name (Juan Lobato Valero), was a councilor in the Madrid City Council three decades ago, since then he has had a relevant weight in the turbulent Madrid federation and was the one who instilled in him an interest in public affairs. Some internal voices claim that he was also key in the erratic movements that removed him from the general secretariat in Madrid. The trajectory of the resigned was typical of someone who can show the necessary experience to forge solid leadership, although in the end he only remained the top leader of the Madrid socialists for three years, from November 2021 until this week.
A lawyer by training, Lobato is a Treasury technician, so he knows in depth what correct taxation entails in order to implement public policies. His experience in politics also goes back 21 years. In 2003, at only 19 years old, he achieved the status of socialist councilor of Soto del Real (Madrid). Popular support allowed him a meteoric rise and, in 2015, he became the first PSOE mayor of the town in the mountains of Madrid since the Second Republic. Four years later, in 2019, he achieved an absolute majority and it was not until two years later, in 2021, when he left the mayor’s office to focus on his candidacy to lead the Madrid PSOE, something he had already tried without success in 2017.
Within the party, several leaders recognize that, in April 2021, seven months before achieving the General Secretariat of the PSOE in Madrid, Lobato won so that Pedro Sánchez ended up betting on him as the least bad Madrid leader compared to the mayor of Fuenlabrada, Javier. Ayala, whom Soto del Real contested and defeated in the primaries.
A viral speech against Vox
The former leader of the Madrid socialists was then number four on the list with which Ángel Gabilondo participated in the regional elections – and managed to be the first force, although he did not manage to govern by the right-wing pact –, and he was the party’s envoy to a debate in Business Television which ended up going viral for its responses to the then leader of Vox, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, regarding the tax reduction. The leader of the extreme right promised to lower personal income tax “for all” Madrid residents and Lobato refuted him with a 40-second response that is reproduced below and which triumphed at that time on social networks.
“In Madrid there are many Madrid residents who earn less than 12,000 euros, specifically 30%, for whom this reform reduces them to zero euros. Also in Madrid there are many people who earn less than 30,000, specifically another 40%, for whom this tax reduction reduces them by 5 euros per month. And there are also many people (22%-23%) who earn up to 60,000 euros, which they reduce by 11 euros per month. However, for the other 7%, their reform lowers them to 4,500 euros. This is the reform they propose,” said Lobato.
This was one of the speeches that shaped Sánchez, who, without particular enthusiasm, opted for Lobato in the Madrid congress, understanding that he had a more transversal profile than the leftist mayor of Fuenlabrada. As soon as he was elected, in an interview in elDiario.es, Lobato was already open to agreeing with Ayuso’s PP, the most right-leaning party in Spain, on “strategic” issues. “We are a party of principles, not dogmas, and we want to be a useful party that aspires to govern. And such a party assumes the responsibility of making decisions for the good of the majority of this region. That also means working parliamentaryly to try to achieve our objectives,” he said.
But Ferraz soon realized that this vision of Lobato’s politics blurred his opposition to the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and, a few months after his victory in the primaries, talk began about his possible replacement.
The former mayor of Soto del Real, meanwhile, tried to differentiate himself from Más Madrid, the main opposition force in the community that gave no respite to the Madrid leader and emerging figure in the PP. Already in 2022, when the Minister of Health, Mónica García, suggested that restaurants and bars would be prevented from including alcoholic beverages in their daily menus, Ayuso and Lobato reacted identically. Both published messages and videos on their networks defending the consumption of wine. “Time to eat and a good wine from Madrid, it doesn’t fail,” said the then socialist secretary in the recording that was broadcast on X.
Lobato has also disagreed with Sánchez’s leadership on issues that, in recent months, aligned him with the barons most critical of Ferraz, such as the Castilian from La Mancha Emiliano García Page or the Aragonese Javier Lambán, who are precisely the ones who have spoken publicly in his support after his abrupt resignation on Wednesday. Like them, the former leader of the PSOE of Madrid showed his reluctance regarding the amnesty law for Catalan independentists condemned by the process. More recently, he did not hide his rejection of a unique financing for Catalonia that the PSC agreed with ERC so that Salvador Illa could be sworn in as president.
Since his arrival at the head of the turbulent Madrid federation, marked by fratricidal wars and permanent tensions with Ferraz since the PSOE lost power in Madrid in 1995, Lobato had a differentiated strategy for the state leadership of his party. Sánchez arrived at Moncloa thanks to his pacts with the left and the nationalist and independence forces. But Lobato considered that, in the Community of Madrid, the job of the PSOE was not so much to try to attract the votes of Más Madrid or Podemos but rather to look for the voters of the defunct Ciudadanos who had gone to the PP in the 2021 elections.
In the only elections in which he ran as a candidate for president of the Community, those of 2023, the PSOE failed to surpass Más Madrid and remained the third force in the Assembly, although with a better result than in the 2021 elections. Lobato managed 614,000 votes – just 2,000 more than in the previous event – and 27 seats compared to 27 for Más Madrid and 70 for Ayuso, which achieved a majority Absolute baggy.
“Education” and “respect” in the face of Ayuso’s insults
The strategy pitted Lobato against members of his party with a more leftist profile such as those from the so-called red belt of Madrid. But he continued trying to get away from the mud that Ayuso spreads in the Madrid Assembly with his indiscriminate attacks on the left, which he links to ETA or Venezuela. The Madrid leader’s slogan was “education” and “respect”, which in such a polarized context in the Madrid chamber made him practically invisible in the regional media focus, let alone in the national one where Ayuso has stood out.
The end in public life of someone who seemed to have the necessary attributes to be considered a kind of Mr. Politics has been directly linked to his confrontation with the Government and the state PSOE. First, he reluctantly assumed that he had to act as Begoña Gómez’s main defender when she testified before the university investigation commission of the Madrid Assembly. Madrid socialists explain that they only accompanied Gómez from his entry into the regional chamber to the commission because Ferraz asked him to.
At the beginning of November, when it was already known that Ferraz had been defenestrated, Lobato decided to register before a notary some WhatsApp conversations that he had had eight months earlier with Pilar Sánchez Acera, his partner in the leadership of the PSOE in Madrid and who, at that time, was the chief of staff of today’s minister Óscar López, who in turn was Sánchez’s chief of staff in Moncloa.
She asked Lobato to use in a plenary session of the Assembly the confession that Ayuso’s boyfriend sent to the Prosecutor’s Office for two tax crimes, arguing that the document was already in the hands of the press. The newspaper ABC was the one who revealed, last week, that Lobato had gone to the notary’s office. He defended his actions on Tuesday, in a public appearance without questions, ensuring that he did it to shield himself and also Sánchez Acera from anyone who could accuse them of having used a document leaked by the State Attorney General, accused in the case investigating the filtration. In fact, his own gesture made Lobato have to testify this Friday before the Supreme Court, to which he had to hand over his mobile phone.
There were very few in the Madrid PSOE – and almost none in the state party – who understood that Lobato made that decision and took the messages to a notary without telling anyone, not even her interlocutor in the conversation. Internal pressure made him resign 24 hours later, on Wednesday. “Without a doubt my way of doing politics is not the same nor perhaps sometimes compatible with that of a majority of the current leadership of my party. “Nothing happens,” he assumed. He left just two days before the Federal Congress of the PSOE began this weekend, in Seville.
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