A loss of 133,548 votes, 428 fewer councilors, three lost capitals -among them Seville, the jewel in the crown- and the same three provincial councils and the PP dyeing the Andalusian map blue and erasing the traditional socialist red, with an advantage of more than 185,000 votes. The disaster that these municipal elections have meant for the Andalusian PSOE has overwhelmed the worst nightmares even of those who did not have much confidence in the management of the current leadership. The most critical of the Secretary General, Juan Espadas, predicted an unmitigated defeat, but reality has exceeded all expectations and has exacerbated the spirit of revenge among many of those who were defeated by the new leadership.

“So far we have come” was one of the most repeated messages in the WhatsApp groups of these socialists, many of whom were on the front line in the stage in which Susana Díaz was the general secretary of the formation. Barely a few minutes had passed since the results were known when mobile phones began to burn with messages, first of dejection and then of calls to action.. To action against Swords.

For months a part of Andalusian socialism has been waiting for the opportunity to settle accounts with the Secretary General and May 28 was the date marked in red on the calendar. The slogan, until this Sunday, was “on 28-M we speak” with the idea of starting some kind of movement on the 29th and with the aim of putting together an alternative to his leadership in the expectation of an extraordinary congress that few doubted.

However, the surprising decision of Pedro Sánchez to call general elections immediately and to dissolve, on the same Monday, the Cortes Generales has not only caused astonishment, but also and above all, has frozen any hint of internal contestation. The same at the national level against the national leader himself as at the regional level to question the leadership of Juan Espadas.

The general secretary of the Andalusian PSOE has avoided that this incipient critical movement materializing in a real threat, but some of those who promote it reject that it can be taken for granted. “Espadas has not been saved with the elections, only the inevitable is delayed,” say the sources consulted.

There will not be a manager or an extraordinary regional congress in the short term, the two options that these critics were considering, but that does not mean that there will not be around summer, once the general elections are held and if, as everything indicates , the debacle of Sánchez's PSOE is consummated.

That will be the moment to get up and fight with an alternative candidacy, “if Espadas reapplies”, which is not yet formed but of which they have no doubts.. “The discomfort is huge,” they underline, and add that “there are many people thinking that this is not a necessity, but an obligation.”

This option would happen, they insist, to include all sectors of the party and thus undo what they consider Espadas' major mistake, leaving “45% without participation.”

“The party needs new leadership, the problem is that we don't have leadership,” insists another veteran socialist on his side.

What seems ruled out, and several former leaders consulted agree on this, is that Susana Díaz is going to champion that alternative. She herself affirms that she is not involved in that, although it is true that on the occasion of this electoral campaign she has returned to party activity, participating in a hundred rallies outside the leadership, which has not liked this initiative at all.

Susana Díaz greets a supporter before a rally in Cuevas del Almanzora (Almería) at the beginning of the month.

In fact, there is no shortage of those who link the reappearance of Díaz in the campaign to the decision, just one day after 28-M, of the party leadership to exclude her from the permanent deputation of the Senate, which has left the former president of the Board without salary. “It is shameless,” say socialist sources.

If there were no elections next month, discontent would have exploded in a matter of weeks. At the time when the Steering Committee of the PSOE-A was held to, as is customary, analyze the results of 28-M. That was the time and place where critics were going to raise their voices and hold the current regional leadership accountable.

That Sánchez has pressed the red electoral button means that at the meeting of the Steering Committee that has to be held there will only be one point on the agenda: the ratification of the lists.

But it is a matter of time, they insist, because the PSOE, these sources believe, is forced into a catharsis to overcome a situation that is “bad, very bad.”

In Andalusia, in addition, they criticize from this sector that the largest federation of the PSOE has become, thanks to Espadas, irrelevant both inside and outside the community. “There is a lack of autonomy, there is a lack of their own criteria, their own voice”, points out a former leader today involved in this current of contestation and who emphasizes, paraphrasing Alfonso Guerra, that the Andalusian PSOE “is not even known by the mother who gave birth to it”. .

Not to mention the results that the Andalusian PSOE has reaped in each of the calls to which it has been submitted. Under the leadership of Espadas, the party, lamented the sources consulted, has gone “from defeat to defeat until the final defeat.”