The abrupt resignation of Adriana Lastra as deputy general secretary of the PSOE last Monday is prompting Pedro Sánchez to address a remodeling of all the party's command bridges. The objective is to face a new electoral cycle in which the leader of the PSOE plays everything for everything. Ultimately, his own political survival and his re-election as Prime Minister.
The internal restructuring will be much broader than initially planned, according to what the PSOE warns, while everyone is waiting for a handover to be announced that will be ratified next Saturday by the party's federal committee.
Precisely the formal call for the meeting of the party's highest body between congresses for this Saturday in Ferraz, sent yesterday to all its members, confirmed Sánchez's intention to broaden the scope of the party's remodeling after Lastra's departure, which precipitated all events. The call for the meeting, signed by the secretary of organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, incorporates into the agenda – after the “political analysis” that Sánchez himself will carry out – the debate on the “structure of the federal executive commission and parliamentary groups ”.
The forecast thus is that Sánchez executes relays both in the leadership of the party in Ferraz and in the directions of the socialist groups in Congress and the Senate. The leader of the PSOE could thus undertake new appointments to replace Lastra in the deputy secretary general, but also to recompose the entire organizational chart of Ferraz and his spokesperson, a position held by Felipe Sicilia since the last PSOE congress, held in Valencia in October from last year.
The changes will also affect, therefore, the leadership of the socialist parliamentary groups, which could also affect their current spokespersons in Congress and the Senate, Héctor Gómez -who in September 2021 took over precisely from Lastra- and Eva Granados, in the position also since last October.
Uncertainty remains installed in the PSOE, however, since many of the leaders who could be benefited or harmed by these changes say they have no indication in this regard. But some wonder how it can benefit to prolong for several days the unknown about the remodeling that Sánchez designs together with his closest team in Moncloa, among whom are Félix Bolaños, Óscar López and Antonio Hernando, who keep rigorous secrecy.
After the socialist debacle at the polls in Andalusia, on June 19, Sánchez is already in electoral mode, in any case, to try to take flight in the municipal and regional elections in May next year, which will be the prelude to the general ones scheduled for December 2023. Good proof of this is that another of the items on the agenda of the federal committee next Saturday will already establish the call and calendar for the primaries and the process of preparing candidacies for the different institutions.
Everything is speculation in the PSOE, in many cases interested, until Sánchez reveals the spare parts. But regarding the leaders called to gain more prominence in the party, all the socialist gazes already coincide in directing themselves towards the exlehendakari Patxi López and the current Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría, among others. Although without confirming for now in what charges. “We still don't know anything, we will be the last”, some of them resign themselves.
