What will Diana Morant's PSPV be like? What profile do you want to highlight by combining your status as Pedro Sánchez's minister and your status as leader of the opposition to Carlos Mazón? How will you defend the Valencian agenda -investments, financing, debt, water, etc.-, being a member of that same government? How will the new party leader manage the ideological legacy left by Ximo Puig? These and other questions will need answers since Diana Morant will soon be the person who leads the second federation of Spanish socialism, replacing former president Puig.
The pact reached last week to finalize his candidacy, supervised by Ferraz, has, for the moment, only addressed the distribution of organic power quotas. There is broad consensus that his election has been the best decision, despite a surprising methodology that questions the autonomy of the PSPV. “She is a woman, she is young, she has a lot of strength outside the party, more than inside; She is the one who can bother the right the most,” says a socialist leader. But in the coming weeks, the new leader will have to define her story, her way of understanding the federation internally, how she wants it to relate to the PSOE and how she wants to define the nuances of her leadership.
In recent years, the PSPV has acquired a differentiated personality from what it had been in the past, except in the period in which Joan Romero was general secretary. Ximo Puig, especially in recent years, has defined a federal, Valencian, anti-centralist discourse (the idea of Madrid D.F. is his), with a particular vision of what the territorial debate should be: “the Spain of Spains”, in words of the former president. “There will always be the question of whether that position was that of the PSPV or that of Ximo Puig, I think more so that of Ximo Puig,” comments a person close to the former president and a good connoisseur of Valencian socialism, more Jacobin than Girondino in times past.
At the same time, Ximo Puig's relationship with Pedro Sánchez has been merely pragmatic; loyal but without excessive complicity. “Loyalty is not submission,” the former president used to say in these cases. With a wound that seems to have never healed: the support that Ximo Puig gave to the federal committee that dismissed Sánchez and his support for Susana Díaz in those famous primaries. But this did not prevent him, as Valencian president, from positioning himself in favor of Sánchez at key moments of the pandemic, in the opening of dialogue with the Catalan independentists or even in the granting of pardons. And it is important to highlight that the election of Diana Morant was based on a proposal from Ximo Puig to Sánchez, which he immediately accepted.
So far, all the messages that Diana Morant has sent have gone in the direction of reinforcing the role of the Spanish Government, logical given her status as minister. But the PP and Vox have plenty of artillery prepared against her, precisely because of this condition. They want to hold her responsible for the fact that the Government does not give a clear response to the change in the regional financing model, that María Jesús Montero refuses to establish a leveling fund as long as there is no new model, that water flows are not approved for the Segura or that investments in this community are not increased. That is, PSPV sources point out, her weak point. Although, as a historic Valencian socialist leader adds, “it is also a strength, because it forces the right to mobilize against it.” “It will have a lot of visibility,” they comment.
At the same time, governing the PSPV is not going to be easy. The people consulted agree that this is a “disstructured” federation, as is the Valencian geography. But the new leader of the PSPV has the advantage, they point out, of connecting with new audiences. “With Ximo Puig, a historic stage in the PSPV closes, with a generation of leaders who have led the party for decades; "She represents authentic regeneration." In this new stage, the logical thing is that Diana Morant bets on young profiles, on people who like Pilar Bernabé, current Government delegate or Victor Camino, national deputy, are called to have greater organic prominence. But she will soon have to clarify what her story is going to be. The political presentation of the extraordinary congress in March will give many clues. But she will be the one who will have to define herself to understand what the new PSPV will be like.
