Sánchez's first face to face with the critical barons: "The Federal Committee is not going to be as peaceful as it should"

On the night of the scrutiny of the municipal and regional elections, as the debacle of the PSOE was consummated, the swords began to be raised within the party. Barely 12 hours later, they returned to their sleeves after the appearance of the President of the Government in which he announced the early call of the generals to “assume in first person” the results.

“Now we can only do one thing: take care of the brand”, they settled in one of the territories in which the policies and alliances of the first coalition government at the head of La Moncloa have been most questioned.. The demand for accountability was left in abeyance until after the count on July 23.

The apparent closing of ranks, however, was blown up this Friday after Ferraz decided to modify several electoral lists drawn up by the different regional leaderships of the party. Among them, that of Toledo to initially include the city's mayoress, Milagros Tolón, as number one and finally as number two in Congress, who did not appear on the ballot that the Socialists from Castilla-La Mancha had sent to Madrid.

“There is a lot of discomfort in our federation and in others due to the changes of names through impositions that many of us interpret as personal whims,” they denounce in the team of Emiliano García-Page, the only socialist baron who achieved an absolute majority on 28-M. “The Federal Committee this Saturday is not going to be as peaceful as it should be,” they warn.

The highest body between congresses of the PSOE meets for the first time after the loss of six regional governments -Aragon, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, the Valencian Community, Extremadura and La Rioja- and of emblematic city councils such as those of Seville and Valladolid. In principle it was expected that the meeting would serve to encourage a party that was left in “shock” with the count of 28-M, in addition to proceeding a priori smoothly to the formalism of the approval of the candidacies for the next appointment with the polls.

The internal tensions due to the reluctance of the socialists of Aragon to place the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría, as number one in the Congress for Zaragoza and the discrepancies over the Valencia ballots between the provincial and regional leadership had apparently been settled in the territories. No major tweaks were expected in the Lists Commission, which had to approve them this Friday.

However, in Ferraz they also decided to disavow the changes that the still acting president of the Valencian Community, Ximo Puig, had made, arguing that there had been “a disagreement in the federation” and that they had tried to “achieve a plan that integrates everyone”. In addition, they placed Javier Izquierdo, a member of the Federal Executive, at the head of the Senate's candidacy for Valladolid, considering him “a very important asset”, displacing Sara Galván, the one elected in Castilla y León.

In Aragon they also expressed their “deep disagreement” with the decision to modify their lists in Zaragoza and Teruel, whose composition, they assured, “has hardly anything to do with the proposals of the provincial committees and, therefore, with the opinion of the militants “. “We regret this decision that is going to produce, with all certainty, a deep discouragement among the militants a few weeks before the elections,” they stressed in the party led by Javier Lambán.

Grease the machinery

With this tidal wave of movements as a backdrop, the PSOE will once again grease its electoral machinery this Saturday after the party's national leadership has spent two weeks trying to teach defeat in the municipal and regional elections. One argument is that in the general calculation “only” they remained three percentage points behind the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. They also stress that the loss of votes compared to 2019, some 400,000, was not “an excessive stick”. “People have not gone to another party, they have stayed at home,” they maintain in the socialist leadership, where they estimate the abstention of around half a million people.

In parallel, the strategy of proposing the PSOE's candidacy for the generals in a kind of electoral ticket with Yolanda Díaz's Sumar has been retouched, trying to unite the entire left on its ballot. The first to put this theory into practice was the president himself, who in a speech in Congress before the deputies and senators of his group last week radicalized his speech, appropriating some of Podemos' own tactics such as the attack on certain media and the confrontation with the “powerful”.

charges relocated

Unlike the Federal Committee of March, the presence of Emiliano García-Page is expected in the one called today, the baron who has always spoken most clearly against the policies of Sánchez and his partners. Ximo Puig and Javier Lambán will also attend, who will be evicted from the governments of the Valencian Community and Aragon that they have managed for eight years despite having grown in votes.

Of the six socialist leaders who will have to leave the command when the new regional executives are formed, only Francina Armengol and Concha Andreu have accepted the party's offer to aspire, respectively, to deputy for the Balearic Islands and senator for La Rioja. In addition, an attempt has been made to ensure the political future of 14 of the 17 socialist ministers and 15 mayors who will also lose their positions when the town councils are constituted next Saturday, including Seville, Antonio Muñoz, and the from Valladolid, Oscar Puente.