It was after the hard setback of the Galician elections when Pedro Sánchez called to “consolidate leadership” and warned of the need to reinforce the presence in the territories. There began the machinery to renew the faces in different Communities, some unexpected like those of … Juan Espadas, Juan Lobato or Luis Tudanca. There was one striking exception to this process piloted by Ferraz with an iron fist: Galicia. In the region where the PSOE achieved its worst regional results in all of Spain (a very poor 14.07%), being overwhelmed on the left by the BNG and failing in its efforts to prevent another absolute majority for the PP, nothing is going to change.
Formally, the PSdeG-PSOE holds its regional congress on March 8 and 9 in Santiago de Compostela. But it will be a pure formality, since no one has appeared against the candidate for re-election, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro. He was the face of the debacle of the socialists in the Galician elections of February 2024, but the campaign was not his. The electoral strategy was ordered by Ferraz, and the priority was to give air to Ana Pontón’s BNG as the best option to disrupt the absolute majority of the PP.
The line of action was also faithfully followed by the socialist media environment – including the CIS, with delirious polls -, which devoted itself to shuffling the serious options of the nationalist candidate, giving gas light to Besteiro, who resignedly fulfilled his role. secondary. Sánchez wanted inflict a defeat on Feijóo in Galicia even if that meant rearming nationalism. He failed in his efforts and dragged down the PSdeG, today with just 9 seats out of 75, while the BNG enjoys 25.
The Galician baron is running for his third term at the head of the party. The first was abruptly interrupted in 2016 due to the judicial investigations that Judge Pilar de Lara opened against him. With all the cases against him filed, Sánchez rehabilitated him for politics in 2023, first as a delegate of the Government in Galicia, then as a deputy for Lugo, before entrusting him with the candidacy for the regional elections.
The harmony between the two has always been good: he even offered him a ministry, as Sánchez himself revealed during the campaign, in which he devoted himself. His second term began, precisely, during the days in which Sánchez secluded himself to debate his future. And after the federal congress in Seville, the regional leadership had to be renewed, which has found no rivals. Nobody dares. The party knows that Besteiro has the support of Moncloa. And, on the other hand, no one else wants to take the step of managing a party in ruins.
Crisis in Santiago
In the weeks before the conclave, the PSdeG is immersed in an unprecedented crisis in Santiago de Compostela, a city that it governed for 31 years in democracy and in which it is about to be left with only two councilors of the 25 of the local corporation. The local executive, in the hands of someone close to Besteiro, initially led to the suspension of the council’s spokesperson, Gonzalo Muiños, from militancy, accusing him of “repeated indiscipline” based on a list of accusations that the affected party has completely denied.
This Friday the PSOE ended up breaking the municipal group, by decreeing the expulsion of three other councilors “for refusing to comply with the party’s orders.” The councilors, coming from the previous mandate in which they were part of the government of the socialist Xosé Sánchez Bugallo, had closed ranks with Muiños and ignored the decision of the local group to appoint councilor Sindo Guinarte as a new spokesperson. Of the six representatives of the PSOE, four have lost their membership status and in a matter of days they will be expelled from the group, when the party formalizes it.
This inexplicable crisis, which apparently originated from the refusal to vote against an ordinance on tourist housing and the refusal to incorporate personnel designated by the local executive as advisors, actually had another background.
According to Muiños, only enough councilors have been sought to resign so that the local secretary, Aitor Bouza, could find accommodation in the plenary session, with the consequent salary allocation. For months the “pressure” continued, even with offers to relocate possible resignations to other electoral lists. Muiños and her three companions refuseduntil in September the unity was broken with Guinarte and another councilor, those now designated by the local PSOE to take the lead in the Council, chaired by a minority BNG that rubs its hands at its electoral growth.
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