It took Felipe González a year to leave the PSOE general secretariat since his defeat against José María Aznar in the 1996 general elections, and he remained during that period as leader of the opposition in Congress. Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba took eight months to seize organic power since he was appointed candidate for the November 2011 elections by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who denied him the reins in the first instance. In the event of a defeat on 23-J, Pedro Sánchez would still have two years in office ahead, if he wanted to, to lead a transition from the leadership of the party and design post-Sanchism. It would not be unusual for the socialist leader and Prime Minister to hold on to Ferraz's chair, something that has happened regularly in the changing of the guard within the party and that has its echo in the territories. “I am not willing for this trip to end on 23-J,” said Sánchez on Sunday in Dos Hermanas, in a message that fits perfectly with this thesis..

The Andalusian PSOE is a good paradigm that shows how difficult transitions are in the match of the fist and the rose. To the point that he is capable of breaking friendships, as happened to Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán. It was known that the two former presidents of the Board used to go to the movies with their wives on Sundays, but those moviegoing afternoons ended when the relationship between the two cooled down. And he did it because the former Minister of Finance wanted to take over organic power when his predecessor chose him as his successor. And Chaves was not about to do it. Or at least not as fast as Griñán would have wanted..

That caused a bicephaly within the Andalusian PSOE that was not easy to manage. Griñán, today awaiting jail time for the conviction in the ERE case, took 11 months to become secretary general of the Andalusian PSOE since he took office as president of the Board. Griñán himself acknowledged that this duplicity, with Chaves as the organic leader of the party's largest federation and he as head of the regional Executive, was a “problem”.. “What has to be done is that the normal becomes normal in the very legality of the party,” he said in January 2010, a couple of months before becoming general secretary of the Andalusian socialists in an extraordinary congress.

Griñán's successor on the Junta did not let so much time pass and it only took her two months to take over the leadership of the party after arriving in San Telmo. But Susana Díaz did resist leaving the leadership of the party after losing the Junta de Andalucía in December 2018. The woman from Triana controlled the party, already very weakened after having commanded the revolt of the barons that deposed Pedro Sánchez and losing the primaries against the current president of the Government. In the time that he was in charge of the Andalusian PSOE from his defeat until the primaries that ended his leadership, he raised several battles with the head of the party, some very striking, such as the design of the 2019 general lists. It was another organic defeat, since Ferraz ended up imposing his criteria.

Facing 23-J, Sánchez has done the same, although without conflict with Andalusia, since the leader of the party in the community flees from any clash with his leader. The same is not the case, for example, in Aragon, where the impositions of Ferraz and Moncloa have caused a certain resentment among those close to Lambán. It is logical, in any case, that Sánchez wants to have a similar parliamentary group in Congress. And this becomes relevant in the event of a socialist defeat, since the management of the transition is easier if the parliamentary group is similar to the leader. Sánchez experienced in his flesh the problem of having a parliamentary group more akin to his barons than to himself in that investiture of Mariano Rajoy in which the PSOE abstained, with the exception of those faithful to the now Prime Minister.

The elaboration of the lists of the PSOE to 23-J also has reading in this hypothetical transition. The candidacies are plagued by the ministers of Sánchez's cabinet and his closest team, along with those rebounded from the defeat of the municipal and regional elections on 28-M. The socialist leader thus ensures control of the party if the socialist cadres have to leave institutional posts if the PP manages to govern and it is Alberto Núñez Feijóo who stays in Moncloa. This must be understood as a way of guaranteeing that the controls of the transition will be in the hands of Sánchez.

It must be remembered that the last PSOE congress was in 2021, in Valencia, so the organic mandate can be extended until 2025. However, socialist officials admit that the party must face a “change of model”, a kind of catharsis, if the Madrid politician loses. The organic changes in the territories after the fall of barons like Guillermo Fernández Vara, Javier Lambán and Ximo Puig are in the freezer until after 23-J. But there are already those who speak of the need to flee from such a Caesarist model within the PSOE.

Sánchez, upon reaching Ferraz for the second time, after defeating Susana Díaz in the primaries, guaranteed almost absolute power. The leitmotif of his return to organic power was based on the idea that power should be in the hands of the militancy, which raised him to leadership with the apparatus against. For this reason, the socialist general secretary deprived the Federal Committee, the highest body between congresses, of its powers.. It must be remembered that it was the massive resignation of leaders opposed to Sánchez that led to the coup of the barons that toppled the man from Madrid on October 1, 2016.. This possibility is now moving away, with a dome designed by Sánchez in his image and likeness, but within the party they already admit the possibility of turning towards a model with more counterweights.