Edmundo Bal and the think tank El Jacobino dispute the vote of socialists dissatisfied with Pedro Sánchez

Two new political parties will debut in the European elections on June 9. Both are going to be formally established in the first quarter of the year, neither currently has a definitive name to stamp on the ballot and they still share a third characteristic, the most significant: they are simultaneously trying to capture the vote of socialists dissatisfied with the concessions to independentists and sovereigntists that Pedro Sánchez has made in order to be re-elected as president of the Government.

Here are the coincidences. One of those budding candidates is promoted by former Ciudadanos deputy Edmundo Bal through the Nexo platform that he created in September along with other former colleagues such as Francisco Igea, who has already unsubscribed.. Trying to distance himself from the comparison with the orange formation, the State lawyer reinstated to his position after his departure from Congress ideologically defines this project as “centered, not center”, and “transversal”, since it aims to cover “from the right of the PSOE to the left of the PP”.

The other party in contention will be founded from the think tank El Jacobino, which began to take shape three and a half years ago to cover “an orphan space, very clearly, which is that of those abandoned by a left that has moved towards identity axes.”. Its spokesman, Guillermo del Valle, considers that there is now “a niche of dissatisfied socialists” who, although they may have “some difference in nuance,” will feel identified with “the only alternative” to “the intolerable degradation of the rule of law that they represent.” the pacts” signed for the reissue of the coalition Government.

The representatives of these two new currents coincided on December 12 at the presentation of No me resigno, the book that Nicolás Redondo Terreros was still writing when in September he was informed of his expulsion from the group to which he had been affiliated for decades for his public criticism of the most controversial measures adopted by Sánchez, such as the amnesty for those prosecuted for the illegal independence referendum in Catalonia. “I rebel because I believe that the political and ideological tradition of the best PSOE has to be recovered; if possible, in the PSOE, if not possible, let those who have to do it do it,” the former Basque leader concluded his intervention. slipping for the first time the possibility of giving support to other acronyms.

Redondo Terreros is one of the greatest exponents of the Fernando de los Ríos collective, formed by former socialist officials who already questioned the alliances with Podemos in the last legislature and who after 23-J even asked the general secretary of their party to reach some agreement with the PP to not have to depend on groups like Junts, ERC and EH Bildu. Former ministers from the governments of Felipe González and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero such as José Luis Corcuera, José Barrionuevo, Javier Sáenz de Cosculluela and César Antonio have regularly attended the events to analyze the political situation that have been convened in recent months in Madrid. Molina, in addition to the former leader of UGT Cándido Méndez.

Bal has also sat in the front row of these debate forums lately, who trusts that the representatives of the classic PSOE who look with “interest” at his project can channel their discontent through him in the next appointment with the polls.. In conversation with this newspaper, he also indicates that his platform has maintained contacts with El Jacobino, from which “significant ideological differences” separate him, and that for now they have not reached any agreement to appear together, although he does not rule it out either.

“We do not believe that it is intelligent to reproduce a Ciudadanos 2.0 that was born as a center-left party in Catalonia, but that in its national expansion blurred that,” Del Valle, however, de facto closes that possibility of concentrating a useful vote. against bipartisanship. “They are looking for a very legitimate strategy, which we obviously do not share, of replacing the PP. If from the beginning you are born saying neither right nor left, confusion will be generated. Strategically that is what Pedro Sánchez wants. “It's a colossal starting mistake,” he adds.

1,752,000 repentants

According to a survey carried out by Sigma Dos for EL MUNDO, only four and a half months after the last general elections, 22.4% of voters who put the PSOE ballot in the ballot box would change that decision if they could. The party based on Ferraz Street in Madrid concentrates the largest number of repentants -1,752,000- behind those who on June 23 gave their trust to Vox (14.9%), Sumar (12.6%) and the popular (9%).

Those who have definitively lost confidence in Sánchez will have two new options for the Europeans. That of the Nexo platform, which has yet to submit the decision to become a party to its more than 500 associates, presents itself with “a very pragmatic speech” based on “reforms” and “the ability to agree with one another and with others” that will also defend “a strong Welfare State” and “unquestionable” civil rights such as abortion and euthanasia.

In the case of El Jacobino, which has already made the decision to present itself in the absence of looking for a name that “appeals less to history and to something so conceptual”, its main programmatic difference with the PSOE lies in the territorial model.. The approach of the promoters of this laboratory of ideas to which Igea has now joined is that a reorganization must be carried out so that a series of powers – Education, Health, Taxation, Security… – are recovered by the central Government now. who consider that “the Confederal State is synonymous with growing inequalities.”