When Felipe González was Felipe González and at the PSOE congresses there were mostly men in corduroy jackets, Jesús de la Rosa sang from Seville that, even if everything fell apart, he knew of a place where flowers sprouted, where children were born happy and where the built houses were bathed in the sun. And the promises made this weekend by Pedro Sánchez in the capital of Andalusia sounded something similar to all that: a public housing company, protecting the environment, that large companies distribute benefits among their workers. Promises.
The secretary general, endorsed by 90% of the votes, was wearing a brown jacket, but suede. And in the background it wasn’t Triana playing, but the Wild Potra. And also My Way, although not Frank Sinatra’s, that was East Seville at the gates of 2025, not Suresnes in ’74. The song was by an electropop DJ called Calvin Harris who has made a career in the clubs of Ibiza.
During the closing of the 41st federal congress of the socialists, the president of the Government pledged his word not to give in to far-right “harassment” to defend “the values, well-being, consensus and social achievements” of recent decades, now in danger from the reactionary wave that is sweeping Europe and the world.
Sánchez addressed the militants supported by his own: Cerdán, Montero, Bolaños, Gómez de Celis, his hard core of recent years whom he keeps at his side for what is to come. “They are going to hit us, they are going to slander us, they will raise even more the revolutions at which the mud machine already works. They have renounced the debate of ideas and their only project is hoax and defamation. There they are. We, to achieve higher levels of social well-being for the majority of people.”
For three days, the FIBES Conference Center had become a kind of fortress, a weekend retreat in which the PSOE tried to disconnect from all the problems lurking outside. No trace of Aldama, nor of Ábalos, nor of Judge Peinado, nor of the mess of the Attorney General of the State nor of Juan Lobato, the endless open fronts that they barely overcome in Ferraz and in Moncloa and that explain why the congress has been little more than a closing of ranks, a call for loyalty in troubled times.
In search of that peace, Pedro Sánchez locked himself in to eat with his territorial leaders on Saturday, just at the same time that many attendees at the congress from all over Spain were making a gastronomic foray into a tavern near the conclave. Endless people paraded through the bar at rush hour. montaítos of pringáMelva and mechá meat before a PSC activist apologized to the waiter for ordering torreznos instead of chicharrones. “Don’t worry, we speak languages here,” the employee replied, with better humor and politeness than the client who sent those who wore the PSOE congress accreditation around their necks to “clean up the mud of Valencia.”
The tension did not reach that much at the territorial leaders’ lunch with Pedro Sánchez, even though things with Emiliano García-Page or Luis Tudanca were a bit tense. Nor were they much better off with Juan Espadas, the general secretary of the Andalusian socialists who acted as host to an unappreciative audience. Because his inauguration speech precipitated a global reflection that spread through the Andalusian PSOE like wildfire: if 22 minutes of listening to him had seemed endless for everyone, imagining him for four more years as leader of the alternative to the right in Andalusia caused sweat. cold in the temples.
But Page, who was honest after the snack and admitted defending the same thing that the PP defends regarding the pacts with ERC or Bildu or the amnesty law, also said that he had loved the food and that it was okay to be against it. specifically of everything that Pedro Sánchez did. So the atmosphere did not become tense with his express criticism of the party’s strategy, which he defined as a victim, or with his defense of the fallen Juan Lobato. In fact, the commission on regional financing after lunch turned out to be a haven of peace. And all the federations, from Castilian-La Mancha to Catalan, passing through Asturias and the Balearic Islands, unanimously supported the final resolution, shelving the internal schism of the pact with ERC. Or at least shelving it for the moment.
Yes, there was more commotion in the closed-door debates of other commissions. The cheers of a group of women echoed from Equality. The level of effusiveness of the celebration aroused the interest of the media, who came to find out what the achievement was. Aligned with figures such as Carmen Calvo or Ángeles Álvarez, the self-proclaimed classic feminists had managed to stop the attempt to advance that the framework paper proposed regarding the acronym LGTBIQ+ to leave them only in LGTBI, a setback in the recognition of sexual identities.
They also celebrated the success of an amendment to exclude anyone “of the biological male sex” from women’s sports competitions. Or what is the same, a measure against trans women that goes in the opposite direction to the roadmap of the coalition Government since the last legislature, when it shared power with Unidas Podemos.
A picturesque episode also took place in the Statutes Commission. It is tradition that the Socialist Youth contributes its historic amendment in favor of the Republic and against the Monarchy, which it is also tradition that the party is responsible for overthrowing. But this time in Ferraz they were even more astute in their defense of the king. In exchange for watering down this initiative, they committed to their young group to increase their representation in the party bodies from 2% to 5%, in addition to fixed financing. A word that, according to the youth themselves, the management did not fulfill. “We have been left without a Republic, without representation and without financing,” they lamented. Sources from the leadership of Socialist Youth, aligned with the party leadership, however, assure that the outcome of the congress was a success for the young group because they managed to carry out the initiative to lower the voting age to sixteen years.
However, the plan to close ranks and reinforce Sánchez’s hard core left little room for the strong emotions of other conclaves. In the creation of the new Executive, the changes were so little known that what caused the most surprise was a continuity, that of the spokesperson Esther Peña, whom many people in the party considered amortized. The replacement of Minister Ana Redondo also drew attention, although a senior government official not exactly enthusiastic about her career in Equality privately confessed that, in his opinion, “what is truly surprising is that she is still in the ministry.”
Sánchez closed his speech with a mention of the “sons and daughters, the grandsons and granddaughters, to whom we have the duty to bequeath a more just and peaceful world on a living planet.” An invitation to hope among their own ranks in the midst of the prevailing pessimism. And everyone then returned to their posts after a weekend of socialist therapy. The militants, to their territories. And the Government to defend itself from what awaits it outside.
#PSOE #Seville #selfdefense #manual
