"I know that one day I will stop being President of the Government, but it will not be on July 23," Pedro Sánchez warned in his final speech before the PSOE federal committee. A message that had a double interpretation: on the one hand, the President of the Government thus assured that the great electoral contest of 23-J is not lost in advance for the Socialists, as some fear, nor is a change in the political cycle in Spain inevitable hand in hand with the Popular Party and Vox.
“Once again, the decisive hour has come. And the first thing I want to tell you is that victory is possible, ”said Sánchez in his initial speech, to shake the discouragement that is spreading among the Socialists and inject combat morale into them. Even victory.
Another reading of Sánchez's message that his time has not yet come, in an internal key, called for settling the succession movements that are already taking place behind the scenes, if the electoral result is adverse, and that they are not going unnoticed in Ferraz. There is an evident swell in the PSOE, still contained, however, pending the scrutiny of 23-J.
Yesterday the day was threatening a storm, after the clashes settled the day before between the federal leadership of the PSOE and some notable socialist territorial leaders due to the last-minute changes imposed in the candidacies for Congress and the Senate. The president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, now reinforced with a new absolute majority, chose not to go to the federal committee yesterday, despite the fact that he got away with it the day before and managed to get Ferraz not to alter his lists .
The acting president of Aragon, Javier Lambán, and other delegates from Zaragoza and Teruel did not attend either, as a sign of protest and “dissatisfaction” with the changes imposed on the lists of these provinces. Another noted absence was that of the mayor of Valladolid, Óscar Puente, now also out. "Things are said here," Sánchez later reproached all of them implicitly.
Yesterday, the president of Asturias, Adrián Barbón, also left, who excused himself because he had a wedding, although in Ferraz they do not attribute their distancing to a dislike for the lists -Ferraz accepted without question that Adriana Lastra head the Asturian candidacy-, but for another type of expectations for the possible post-electoral scenario.
But all the others did attend the federal committee. Among them, singularly, two other territorial leaders who felt harmed, and even “dislegitimized” by the changes imposed by Ferraz on the lists came to “show their faces”.
Thus, the still Valencian president, Ximo Puig, who exhibited elegance by putting the interest of the PSOE before the imminent elections to his personal opinion on those who try to move his chair, in Ferraz and in Valencia, after having achieved the best electoral result in his territory since 2007. "If there is succession, it will not be decided here or some from there," warned the faithful to Puig.
Also the leader of the PSOE of Castilla y León, Luis Tudanca, was "outraged, disappointed and enormously disappointed", at the gates of Ferraz, by the changes imposed on the candidacies in his territory. He was also "very tough" in his intervention behind closed doors, before Sánchez. But, like Puig, Tudanca put his responsibility with the PSOE before the new general elections, and assured that "he will leave his skin" in the campaign.
In this way, the storm faded, at least until 23-J, and the sun ended up rising over Ferraz, and it is not a metaphor. The "closing of ranks" prevailed over discouragement and internal protests, and the federal committee approved by show of hands, "unanimously", all the electoral candidacies.
"You have to continue," summarized some, with resignation. “We are going to continue governing”, added others, more courageous, after listening to Sánchez and the interventions of other territorial leaders, such as Guillermo Fernández Vara from Extremadura and the Basque Eneko Andueza, among the most prominent.
Pedro Sánchez, like many of them, called on the Socialists to unite. "It is important that the PSOE come out united, brave and powerful", warned the President of the Government. "Whether Spain advances or retreats will depend on our victory," he put forward as a dilemma. "We want to win because we want to build the best Spain", he justified.
The leader of the PSOE began by celebrating the agreement that Sumar and Podemos reached the day before to attend these general elections together. “It is more than positive news,” Sánchez stressed. And he assured that in this way the dispersion of the vote of the left will be avoided, which already caused in the 28-M elections that the PSOE will be evicted from many of the regional presidencies and the main mayoralties that it governed. The pact achieved by Yolanda Díaz in the political space to the left of the PSOE, as she highlighted, will avoid wasting energy "uselessly" and will also leave behind a "sterile noise", very demobilizing for the entire progressive electorate.
But, with everything, Sánchez warned that "the maximum responsibility for what happens depends on the Socialists", in order to be able to reissue a progressive government after 23-J. "The PSOE is already underway and we are going out to win the elections," he assured. "We are not going to give up, we are going to make the trip continue," he encouraged. "We are going to continue fighting with all our might the reactionary forces to make Spain progress," he insisted. And he called on the "social majority" of the country to "step forward" and vote for the PSOE "so that Spain continues to move forward instead of going backwards."
Sánchez also directed the focus against Alberto Núñez Feijóo and denounced his "cocktail of lack of economic plan, social setback and fiscal injustice." In addition, the president vindicated the Government's management, as well as the good figures for economic growth and job creation in Spain registered, he highlighted, international organizations such as the ECB, the IMF and the OECD. Therefore, he warned of "a truth like a temple." "The Spanish economy is going like a motorcycle and it is not stagnant as Feijóo says," he defended.
"There is no economic alternative on the part of the PP," warned the chief executive. “We have a plan and they have nothing. We have Nadia, and they have no one, ”he stressed, referring to his economic vice president, Nadia Calviño. "We have everything they don't have," Sánchez said. Now only the votes are missing so that he can win the final battle of 23-J.
