During his mandates, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero promoted the careers of some leaders – Carme Chacón, Eduardo Madina or Leire Pajín – in terms of succession and generational change. Although it was finally the veteran Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba who took the reins of the PSOE in 2012, after the fall of the socialist government and the departure of Zapatero.
And all succession debate was buried, or was uprooted, when Pedro Sánchez regained the leadership of the party, already in June 2017, against the entire socialist establishment. Only a few internal aspirations re-emerged due to the forecast that Sánchez would lose the government after the early elections in July 2023. But, against all odds, he managed to retain the presidency.
His latest appointments reinforced leaders such as María Jesús Montero, Félix Bolaños and Pilar Alegría. But, despite the fact that there are always speculations, the official horizon planned until last Wednesday was that Sánchez would once again be elected leader of the PSOE in a federal congress that would be held after this summer, that he would exhaust the legislature and that he would even return to head the socialist candidacy in the 2027 general elections. “It is our best asset,” claimed its followers.
However, the public letter that Sánchez released on Wednesday, in which the dilemma of resigning or continuing as head of the Government was raised in the face of the “harassment and demolition operation” suffered by his wife, turns everything upside down.
While the president remains missing from the scene until he announces his final decision on Monday, and while the impression spreads that he will leave, a still-shocked PSOE remains in suspense and waiting, postponing pending decisions – the approval of the European list is shelved until Tuesday – and tries to avoid plunging into a leadership crisis with a succession debate. Precisely, to dedicate all her efforts to preventing her boss from throwing in the towel, with unsuspected consequences, and for the right to win a game in which she has been committed since 2018, when she was evicted from the Moncloa after the unexpected motion of censure.
If she chooses to resign, the successor, at least in office, would be María Jesús Montero, whom Sánchez appointed first vice president of the Government and deputy general secretary of the PSOE. But Montero herself is the first who, in these moments of uncertainty, avoids the succession debate, waiting for Sánchez to issue her “verdict” on Monday. All movements remain focused, for now, on the president not leaving.
“I don't want to make any statement at this moment, because I am absolutely focused on how, together, we are capable of helping the president to have enough strength and courage to be able to continue,” Montero insisted yesterday in La Sexta. “I am focused solely and exclusively on that,” he insisted.
“I wish and have concentrated all my strength that when he communicates his decision on Monday, it is to convey that he has the strength to be able to continue and therefore that the project moves forward,” Montero concluded. And in the same sense of trying to contain a succession debate, which also overshadows citizen reflection on the quality of democracy, leaders such as Félix Bolaños and Patxi López insisted yesterday.
“We are not in any other scenario other than that the president, after this process of personal reflection, continues with his work,” Bolaños alleged. “The scenario is that we can, starting Monday, continue governing as normal and with the president at the helm,” he confided.
“We are not speculating, because we are doing everything possible so that Pedro Sánchez moves forward and continues to be the president of the Government,” Patxi López concluded.
And while Sánchez remains imprisoned in the Moncloa, the federal committee of the PSOE, the militancy and the sympathizers will today display their “unconditional support” for Sánchez. They will cry out so that he does not leave and stand up, once again, to the offensive of the right. The leadership mobilizes, the federations charter buses, and it is also expected that leading figures will attend the rally called at the gates of Ferraz. “Peter, don't give up,” they all demand.
