“We are not going to stop, we are going to go for it all,” Pedro Sánchez announced last week in a debate on the state of the nation with which he wanted to give a notable boost to the action of the Government and to the course of the legislature. And yesterday he finally unveiled the profound remodeling of the socialist organization chart, which precipitated last Monday the abrupt resignation of the PSOE's deputy general secretary, Adriana Lastra, and which will be ratified next Saturday by the party's federal committee.
The objective of all these movements by Sánchez is to try to break the framework of the change in the political cycle in Spain promoted by Alberto Núñez Feijóo at the head of the Popular Party, with all the demographic winds blowing in his favor.
At the organic level, the decision of the leader of the PSOE is to release all possible ballast to try to overcome the electoral flight. And that the organization is already in combat position, perfectly oiled and at full speed, after the August parenthesis. The calendar is pressing, before the municipal and regional elections in May of next year, which will be the prelude to the final battle: the general elections, scheduled for December 2023.
And the panorama is adverse for the socialists. The electoral crash of June 19 in Andalusia, which keeps the PSOE in "the peace of the cemeteries" in this territory, as they admit, was added to the socialist collapse already registered in the Community of Madrid on May 4, 2021. Thus , according to internal analyses, only the third great socialist leg necessary for Sánchez to aspire to his re-election as Prime Minister remains afloat: precisely Catalonia, where Salvador Illa's PSC won the regional elections on February 14, 2021, although unable to rule.
In addition to the urgent need to align Moncloa and the Government with Ferraz and the parliamentary groups, to overcome dysfunctions and tensions, in these territorial keys of the electoral scenario, it is also necessary to interpret the remodeling of the PSOE organization chart confirmed yesterday by Sánchez.
In the first place, the Minister of Finance and Public Function, the Andalusian María Jesús Montero (Seville, 1966) rises to number two in the PSOE command ladder, as deputy general secretary of the formation, replacing Lastra.
With two general state budgets approved under his belt, by large parliamentary majorities despite the endless turbulence of the legislature, Montero has great political weight and a long history behind him, since he was part of the executives of the Andalusian Government of José Antonio Griñán and Susana Díaz.
The PSOE will also have two new speakers for the executive and legislative action of the Government. A hardened veteran in a thousand battles, also against ETA terrorism, and an emerging figure but also with a remarkable career. The former lehendakari and former president of Congress Patxi López (Barakaldo, 1959) will be the new spokesman for the socialist group in Congress. And the Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Pilar Alegría (Zaragoza, 1977), will be the new spokesperson for the federal executive of the PSOE who will appear every Monday to give an account of their debates and set the political message.
Another veteran of great political weight, the Catalan Miquel Iceta (Barcelona, 1960), will join the PSOE executive. The current Minister of Culture and Sports, in addition to being president of the PSC, will assume the secretariat of Democratic Memory and Laicity of the formation, in which he relieves Patxi López.
The also Catalan Eva Granados (Barcelona, 1975), who was deputy first secretary of the PSC and spokesperson for the Catalan socialists in Parliament, also remains as spokesperson in the Senate.
Sánchez will also lead a new hard core in Ferraz, a kind of party management committee parallel to the executive, which will be the true socialist sanhedrin. It will consist of ten seats, to make it more effective and resolute when it comes to setting the political course, the speech and the electoral and communication action of the PSOE.
Together with Sánchez, this hard core will be made up of five of the ministers who will already be in the PSOE executive. Specifically, María Jesús Montero, Félix Bolaños, Pilar Alegría, Isabel Rodríguez and Miquel Iceta. Also, the parliamentary spokesmen, Patxi López and Eva Granados.
In addition, the organizational secretary of the PSOE, the Navarran Santos Cerdán (Milagro, 1969), who was confirmed in office by Sánchez after his internal disputes with Lastra, and who will have Juan Francisco Serrano from Jaén as deputy, will also be part of this committee. Cerdán, always behind the scenes, plays a fundamental role of dialogue between Ferraz and the socialist federations.
This socialist sanhedrin will be completed by Óscar López (Madrid, 1973), Sánchez's chief of staff in Moncloa, although in his case without being part of the executive. A veteran leader and socialist electoral strategist, López now has at his side in Moncloa another fireproof member of José Blanco's former team in Ferraz, Antonio Hernando (Madrid, 1967), who was joined by Sánchez himself.
In this way, the head of the Executive seeks that the connection and coordination between Moncloa, the Government, the leadership of the PSOE and that of the parliamentary groups is absolute. The difficult challenge of trying to successfully overcome the new electoral cycle calls for having the party ready to review. The fuel tank overflowing. And step on the accelerator.
