Sánchez resurfaces for the useful vote against Vox and shields his leadership in the PSOE

Pedro Sánchez wrote this 23-J the epilogue to his political autobiography, Manual de Resistencia. Against all odds or “against interested odds”, as his team slipped during the last days of the campaign, the leader of the Socialists fulfilled the objective of avoiding a government alternative between PP and Vox. The option provided by the majority of surveys, including those published at the close of the polls. Sánchez noted the “failure” of the “involutionist block” with a triumphant tone on election night, on an improvised stage at the Ferraz headquarters. His investiture remains in the hands of the nationalist and independence bloc, with the need for the support of ERC, EH Bildu, PNV and BNG, and the abstention of Carles Puigdemont's party, JxCAT. However, Sánchez's resistance shields his leadership in the party and leaves him a free hand to negotiate any type of pact. Without the pressures he received in 2016, to the point of twisting his arm with his departure from the general secretariat, to force a technical abstention from the Socialists that would allow the PP to govern.

The leader of the Socialists reinforces his leadership on the back of a result with which he not only resists and blocks a change of government, but also grows in votes and seats. Four points more than in the last elections and gaining two seats, reaching 122. All this, pushed by the useful vote that has mobilized the message of fear to Vox. Sánchez, with the message of establishing himself as the containment dam against the entry of the ultra-right in an Executive led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has grown at the cost of the space to his left, which falls seven seats, but also with a vote borrowed from nationalist and pro-independence formations. Mainly in Catalonia, where the PSC devastates as the first force, going from 12 to 19 deputies, while ERC loses six and JxCAT, one.

In Euskadi, the PSOE also wins the elections in votes, even with a triple tie in seats with PNV and EH Bildu, and in Navarra a deputy grows to be the first force, with two representatives. The socialists hold out in other key territories such as Andalusia, where the popular ones obtain 25 seats, compared to 21 for the socialists, far from the blue tsunami expected after 28-M and winning in Seville, or as in Madrid, where they scratch one more deputy, up to 11. Nor are there a few small constituencies where the Socialists manage to sign a two-seat tie with the PP, which has allowed them to balance the weight of the blocks. In the final campaign sprint, the Socialists also looked at the “embarrassed” PP voter for his pacts with Vox in autonomous communities that would have scared off his more moderate electorate.

The feat of Sánchez turning the polls around, when after the 28-M elections there were not a few territorial leaders who thought about the day after 23-J in terms of succession, stops any internal movement. If Sánchez manages to be sworn in, his continuity as party leader will be assured for at least one more legislature. If a blockade occurs, given the foreseeable castling of Puigdemont's party, which maintains the impossible price of “amnesty and independence”, Sánchez will once again be a candidate and his political future will be decided after casting the cards again.

Feijóo's trump card to force a sort of internal rebellion in the PSOE, putting pressure on the barons with the aim of making them hold an abstention to allow the list with the most votes to govern, completely dissipated with the results of this 23-J. Sánchez has become even more empowered than he was and both his leadership and his parliamentary group are perfectly cohesive.

Instead of fissures appearing in the face of an electoral disaster like that of the municipal and regional ones, the current PSOE comes out reinforced and armored in the face of any critical current. Already to avoid hypothetical fractures, Sánchez drew up some electoral lists with people of his total confidence. Much greater armor than in the 2019 elections. In fact, on this occasion, Ferraz chose to impose his candidates on various lists, both from territories led by critical barons and by like-minded.

The statutes also give Sánchez a double shield to decide the steps to take from now on. In the 39th Federal Congress, held in 2017, a consultation with the militancy on “the government agreements in which the PSOE is a party, on the direction of voting in investiture sessions that mean facilitating the government to another political party and to decide, where appropriate, the revocation of the general secretaries” was established as “obligatory and binding”.. This same precept was ratified again, in the same terms, in the 40th Federal Congress, in 2021.. This is stated in article 348 of the text approved in the last congress. This shielding makes it almost impossible for the 2016 abstention that Feijóo is now demanding to take Vox out of the equation to be repeated. The militants of the parties have stronger ideological positions than those of the voters and, usually, than the leadership of their parties.

Sánchez improves the results of his party on 28-M in various territories and strengthens his leadership in a party where the only critical voice with institutional power is that of the Castilian-Manchego Emiliano García-Page. The electoral campaign of 23-J, with a strong leadership of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in contrast to Felipe González, subjected to private and public pressure to send a message of support that never came, also suggests that in the PSOE there will not be a single old guard far from the current leadership. After throwing the 23-J campaign behind him when the party needed him the most due to his bad expectations, Zapatero emerges with greater legitimacy earned by hand. At least, among the militants, always more ideologically inclined than the voters.

Zapatero assured during the campaign that “the PSOE is extraordinarily united around the leadership of President Sánchez”. A position that coincided with the promotion of various manifestos by ex-leaders and former institutional positions of the PSOE in different federations to support the government's action. The last one, with the title of Voting for the PSOE, was signed by former socialist ministers with both Zapatero and Felipe González, including José Bono, Ramón Jáuregui, Joaquín Almunia, Matilde Fernández, Javier Solana, Mercedes Cabrera, José María Maravall, Carlos Solchaga or Ángeles González-Sinde.

This latest manifesto maintains more impartial positions, although other previous ones have a clearer orientation in an organic key, such as the one entitled The oldest socialism in Madrid, with Pedro Sánchez, or the one previously launched by former Andalusian leaders against the “demonization” of the President of the Government. In the final stretch of the campaign, the veterans of the PSOE-M held an act of support for Sánchez in Ferraz, led by the former mayor of Madrid Juan Barranco, in which they stressed that, unlike other socialist comrades, they are not from “the brotherhood of holy reproach”.. “We do not belong to the brotherhood of the holy reproach, we belong to the culture of the PSOE, to the defense of the best socialist values,” insisted Barranco, in statements collected by EFE, alluding to former socialist charges critical of Sánchez's PSOE.

Without reproaches and more legitimized than ever, Sánchez reappears this 23-J and shields his leadership. About the epic, which he already resorted to in the last rallies, and which he pointed out in a premonitory way at the end of the campaign: “We fell, we got up, we pedaled against the clock, we climbed all the unimaginable climbs” and now “we have a few meters left for the final sprint”.