The return of Susana Díaz: 'rustic' campaign with more than 100 rallies (and full capacity)

Susana Díaz likes electoral campaigns. She liked them when she was in youth, when she ascended, step by step, through the structure of the powerful PSOE of Seville and when she became president of the Junta. And she also likes them now, that she is a senator by regional designation and is far from organic power. You only have to talk a few minutes with her to realize. “This is like the one that belongs to Betis,” says, very illustrative, the Triana politician who, of course, is from the team of the 13 bars. This is how the former socialist leader explains how she feels on her return to the road in this municipal campaign, which will take her to tour Andalusia almost as if it were on the electoral posters. And with the crowded acts.

“I don't get tired, I recharge my batteries every time I go to a rally,” he explains at a stop in Seville between trips. The night before he was in Écija supporting the candidate for mayor of this Seville town. Before, she had worked as a talk show host on Everything is a lie, the Risto Mejide program. And after making some arrangements in the Andalusian capital, he embarked on another journey with stops in six towns in Malaga and Granada.. Villanueva de Algaidas, in the Antequera region, is the largest of the towns that Díaz will have set foot in this weekend, with 4,116 inhabitants.

The meeting in this Malaga enclave will come after another in Fornes, a small town of 500 inhabitants that was born precisely under the mandate of Díaz in San Telmo. In the Governing Council that the Sevillian chaired on October 2, 2018, a few days before signing the electoral advance, her segregation from Arenas del Rey was approved. “Everything makes me excited, I give myself up at each rally, whatever the size of the town,” acknowledges the former president of the Board, who speaks of a “rustic” campaign. Écija, with almost 40,000 inhabitants, is perhaps the largest place through which the Susana Díaz caravan will pass, which has more than 100 events on the agenda since it reappeared in February at a rally in Villanueva del Rosario, in the interior of Málaga.

“I don't fit one more act,” she insists while remembering that she goes where they call her. In Écija there were precisely some militants who came expressly to invite her to a rally, but the former leader could not confirm their presence. Where he will not be there either, although he had planned it, is in Albuñol this Saturday. The candidate from the town of Granada will accompany the former president to Otívar, since Díaz canceled the rally in his town so as not to make it coincide with the act of Pedro Sánchez in Seville. The President of the Government and leader of the PSOE opened his campaign in the Andalusian capital after traveling to the US in the absence of his old opponent. The woman from Triana knows what it is like to fill the silver auditorium of Fibes, which she packed in an act of the first anniversary of her arrival in San Telmo, when she was still the most powerful baroness of the party of the fist and the rose.

Affectionate words from Basi, Mayor of Casariche, to Susana Díaz. “…Susana is to @PSOE what Joaquín is to Betis or Triana to Seville” pic.twitter.com/hY8wHizPbM

— Susana Díaz Info (@SusanaDiaz_info) April 17, 2023

Díaz assures that the quarrels have been left behind and that he reports all his movements to the provincial addresses of the places through which he passes. And also to the regional leadership of the party, now in the hands of Juan Espadas, who won him in the spring 2021 primaries with the support of the Ferraz apparatus. The leadership of the Andalusian PSOE, based in San Vicente, did not count on her in the regional campaign, almost a year ago now. Different sources consulted rule out that this tour of the Triana is an attempt to challenge Espadas and his team, although Díaz has recovered some of those t-shirts with a message that were the house brand of his 2021 primary campaign..

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Now, Díaz goes free and the Twitter account that is in charge of disclosing his acts and even broadcasting them live reports it.. “Susana is to the PSOE what Joaquín is to Betis or Triana to Seville,” said the mayor of Casariche, a Sevillian town in the Sierra Sur in one of those acts broadcast on the networks that follow the former president. Another reference to the team of his loves, which seems to share the motto – “Long live Betis manque lose” – with the militants who continue to search for Díaz despite his fall from the leadership of the Andalusian PSOE. “The people of the PSOE are very good, when you go on a trip and see a town house and go in to greet your colleagues,” says the former president, who also highlights the almost amateurish nature of this small-town campaign. “In Almarchar, everyone made something to eat, in other places sometimes the sound does not go, but people give themselves up,” ditch.

The former president of the Board is optimistic about the result of her party. In the last municipal elections, with her at the controls, the Andalusian PSOE achieved a very positive result. It must be taken into account that the socialists recovered, just six months later, 400,000 votes compared to the regional elections of December 2018, which were the ones that caused the departure of Díaz from San Telmo by the alliance of PP, Cs and Vox. Now, five years later, Díaz is pleased to see “more sympathizers than militants at the rallies” and is confident that the “local key” campaign will help the Andalusian PSOE recover after the traumatic defeat on June 19. “I know the towns a lot and there I don't talk about the PSOE, I get involved with the PSOE,” he says.