There were no dinners, but there were calls and an exchange of opinions about who should take the reins of the PSOE if Pedro Sánchez resigned as President of the Government after his five days of reflection in April. The socialists were divided those days between those who were shocked and those who rushed to anticipate or perpetrate possible scenarios. The movements of the latter were short-circuited in some cases and dismissed as bizarre in others. Everything came to nothing after the general secretary of the socialists decided to remain in office and, immediately afterwards, to avoid speculation and conciliation, announced that he would run for a new mandate. If nothing changes and the legislature comes to an end, there will be Sánchez at least until 2027. What happens next regarding the national leadership will depend on the result of the next general elections and, above all, whether or not the PSOE maintains the government. And this is a maxim unanimously accepted among the leaders and also among the bases.
Quite the opposite of what the bustle of cadres and militants in the different territories indicates, where changes are expected in the current leadership. Surely, in seven of the 17 Autonomous Communities, although in two of them – the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands – it will depend on the will of the current general secretaries, Francina Armengol and Ángel Víctor Torres, respectively. There is nothing to suggest possible rivals if both want to remain in office. The first, in whose federation there is no internal contestation, is today president of the Congress of Deputies and is also in favor of stepping aside in what has to do with her organic responsibilities to promote an orderly replacement. The second, for his part, aspires to repeat as a candidate in the Canary Islands after his time in the Government of Spain. At least, that is the purpose that has been conveyed to the federal leadership, as Ferraz sources attest.
The situation is very different in Aragón, La Rioja, Andalusia, Castilla y León, Madrid and even in Asturias, where the federal leadership detects a swell that in some cases can become a tsunami that, in socialist and In organic terms, it is usually synonymous with internal struggle with unpredictable consequences. Nothing new that does not happen in parties when they lose institutional power or have not held it in decades, as is the case of the Madrid PSOE.
And never before as in the 2023 regional elections, the PSOE had lost so many governments in favor of the right in a single day. On March 28 a year ago, Sánchez’s people saw their territorial power reduced to a minimum compared to 2019, when they turned the map red, adding up to nine autonomous governments. Four years later, those of Valencia, Extremadura, Aragón, La Rioja, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands lost and left the government coalition in Cantabria, but since then only the Extremaduran Guillermo Fernández-Vara and the Valencian Ximo Puig opened the organic process to promote a generational change in their respective general secretariats. Today, in both territories, there are new leaderships. That of Minister Diana Morant in Valencia, after an agreement sponsored by Ferraz that included two other candidates and that of Miguel Ángel Gallardo in Extremadura, who won over Lara Garlito, with 56.2% of the votes.
Unlike Vara and Puig, the Aragonese Javier Lambán has preferred to remain in the general secretary until the next ordinary regional congress, which will arrive after the ordinary federal conclave that Ferraz foresees for the spring of 2025. The decision of one of the most critics of Pedro Sánchez has caused tension between the provincial leaderships and there is already talk of saber rattling. In February, the Huesca socialists demanded an extraordinary congress to relieve Lambán of office while the party leaderships in Zaragoza and Teruel aligned themselves with Lambán and called to close ranks with the current leader and not open an internal war. Battle that in any case will come at the moment when the congress is convened, since no one doubts that the more than certain candidacy of the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría, who will have the approval of Ferraz, “will have to face a candidate that the current secretary general will surely promote,” they say from the federal leadership.
Unrest with Swords in Andalusia and Ferraz
Andalusia is another of the territories where there is discomfort with the current secretary general, Juan Espadas, who in 2021 was blessed from Madrid to remove Susana Díaz from the leadership and won the primaries with 55.05% of the support of the socialists Andalusians compared to the 38.7% added by the former president of the Board. Today the discontent in the federation with its leadership is notable and also in the federal leadership, from where they argue that “he has not known how to form solid teams or capable of building an alternative” to the popular Juanma Moreno. Andalusia is a key territory for the national PSOE and since the socialists left the regional government in 2018 they have done nothing but lose support at the polls. It happened in the regional elections of 2022, in the municipal elections of 2023 and in the general elections of that same year where the PP won an incontestable victory.
The leadership of Espadas is much more than in question because in Madrid it is considered “finished.” So much so that from around Espadas himself, every time there is a change of ministers in Sánchez’s cabinet, someone is in charge of placing him in the pools of ministers, an option that La Moncloa and Ferraz call “nonsense.” Whatever the future of Espadas, the truth is that the largest federation of the PSOE has long ceased to be what it called the backbone of the brand. Many look to Vice President María Jesús Montero as a possible solution for a federation that is systemic for the socialists, something she prefers not to hear.
Lobato, the umpteenth failed attempt
The problem of the Madrid federation is even greater, since it has not governed the Community for almost 30 years and has chained several failed leaderships from whose responsibility the different federal directorates cannot be abstracted. In a territory accustomed to defeat and in which organic balance always prevailed in the preparation of electoral lists, both Zapatero and Sánchez did not resign themselves to putting in a spoon and both failed. The general secretary, Juan Lobato, in office since 2021, won the primaries over the mayor of Fuenlabrada, Javier Ayala, with more than 61%. And ironies of politics today, Ayala himself is one of the names that swarm through the socialist universe to rescue a federation from starvation where historically its leaders take longer to arrive than to be relegated and in which no one has ever achieved a minimum organic stability. Hence, the succession of debacles.
Going for the historic Asturian bicephaly
Concha Andreu has signed up for the Lambán formula of not facilitating the replacement after losing the regional government and nor calling an extraordinary congress, although unlike the Aragonese she does intend to continue in the general secretary, something that Ferraz does not have. very clear “in light of the discontent that permeates the federation.” The federal leadership also foresees primaries and a tough organic battle here, just as in Castilla y León, where they believe that “12 years are enough for Luis Tudanca’s mandate” and that “there are internal movements” that are making waves.
Asturias deserves special mention, one of the few governments that, although just barely, managed to retain the PSOE in 2023. The Asturian socialists won 19 seats, which, added to the three of IU-Más País and the only representative of Podemos, reached the absolute majority. And it cannot be said that the federation has taken up arms against its general secretary, Adrián Barbón, but rather against the one who, after being defenestrated as deputy general secretary of the PSOE, today holds the same position in the Asturian socialist federation. According to an FSA leader, she is attributed with “underground movements in search of support throughout the territory to gain the Asturian leadership and many others in the design of post-Sanchism”, but above all “a negative influence on Barbón ”, which has caused quite a bit of tension in the territory. So many that a week ago, an extraordinary assembly was called from which Lastra emerged, according to several of those present, “crying after forcing the president of the Principality to announce his willingness to run for re-election” to silence the rumors of his hypothetical aspirations. The conclave was developed with “a succession of interventions by institutional officials for the greater glory of Lastra that were previously prepared,” always according to the version of some of the attendees.
The internal response to Lastra, the same interlocutors continue, has been extended to Barbón “due to the strange communion between the two” and no one rules out that around her an alternative to the current secretary general will be promoted in the next congress that, if successful, would recover the historic bicephaly that the FSA maintained between the organic and institutional leadership that was broken with the previous president of the Principality, Javier Fernández. The echo of the bustle of the Asturian organization has reached Ferraz, which is followed with concern, although at the moment without any desire to intervene. Pedro Sánchez is informed of both the evolution and all the details, although he has conveyed to his hard core that “now is not the time” to open that folder of socialism yet.
In Galicia, Euskadi, Cantabria, Catalonia, Navarra, Castilla-La Mancha and Murcia there is no swell and no alternatives to the current leadership are foreseen. In the rest of the federations – except in Extremadura and Valencia, which have held extraordinary congresses in 2024 – anything can happen because the PSOE has a generational change pending since May 2023 that coincides with its greatest moment of territorial weakness and with which it intends to launch to the reconquest of institutional power. And this despite the fact that seven of the 17 general secretaries have only been in office for three years.
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