Luis Tudanca throws in the towel and will not fight to continue leading the PSOE of Castilla y León

The general secretary of the PSOE of Castilla y León, Luis Tudanca, has decided not to fight for the leadership of the party in the autonomous community after a decade at the head of the socialists and having achieved the party’s only electoral victory in four decades, according to El País has reported and elDiario.es has confirmed

Luis Tudanca will announce his future this Tuesday, January 7, as he had announced in recent weeks, but it will be that of not appearing in the primary battle, which opens the way for the candidate from the critical sector, the mayor of Soria Carlos Martínez supported by the general secretaries of León and Valladolid, Javier Alfonso Cendón and Óscar Puente.

Since the crisis unleashed last October by the confrontation between the leadership of Castilla y León and the federal one over the dates of the primaries and regional congress, meetings between the party leadership have been frequent, trying to reach a consensus agreement on a single candidacy, which has not been possible to materialize. Critics demanded that Tudanca step aside and the alternatives offered of a third way or a bicephaly were discarded.

Tudanca became the general secretary of the PSOE of Castilla y León in 2014 after the primaries in which he competed with his predecessor Julio Villarrubia, who was evicted after a mass resignation of his executive. In 2019 he achieved victory in the regional elections but Ciudadanos agreed with the PP to make Alfonso Fernández Mañueco regional president. In the 2022 electoral repetition, the PSOE fell to second position with 29 deputies compared to the 31 of the popular ones, who agreed with Vox to continue governing.

The until now general secretary of the Castilian and Leonese socialists has left after failing to reach consensus on his continuity, sources close to elDiario.es point out, since León, Valladolid and Soria were opposed to him continuing in office in any way, even giving way. the candidacy for the autonomous government. The rest of the provincial secretaries had shown their closeness but at the same time the intention that there be a single consensus candidate that would not provoke a pitched battle in the primaries that would later descend to several levels.

Carlos Martínez, the foreseeable successor, has been mayor of Soria with an absolute majority since 2007, although he had been a councilor since 1999. Since the 2023 elections in which he revalidated the position, he has also been a provincial deputy and has led the PSOE in the province of Soria since the year 2002 until 2017.