Moncloa takes the reins from Ferraz
Tuning an orchestra is a complex art. The notes do not sound the same on all instruments and until the group masters the times, tones and sounds, the rehearsals can be eternal. You don't always tune in to the first, or the second, or the third... Pedro Sánchez has already touched a few keys to adjust the music that accompanies him in his political career. He changed the Government a year ago, the federal leadership and the parliamentary groups, nine months ago and now, in this torrid July, he once again specifies the keys so that his melody sounds harmonic and there are no pieces that are out of tune when they sound from the government, the PSOE or the Congress of Deputies.
Ironizing with the end of sanchismo can be an entertaining exercise for analysts, but the ism that happens to the surname of the Prime Minister was never much more than himself. Some got into the car, others got out and several were shown the exit door. So there is no more operation in the changes announced this Thursday than that of Moncloa taking control of the party in order to put an end to entropy, misgivings and internal confrontations.
The president corrects himself again and chooses María Jesús Montero as substitute for Adriana Lastra – who resigned after being invited to do so – at the head of the deputy secretary general. Pilar Alegría, a young socialist but militant of the "old plan" -also called the classic PSOE-, assumes the spokesperson with full powers in the communication policy of Ferraz, a competition that was attributed by the brave Adriana Lastra in the last reform of the statutes to snatch it from the Secretary of Organization, Santos Cerdán, who remains in office with identical powers and with a deputy attached to his department, Juan Francisco Serrano, who was already a member of the federal leadership. The deputy for Jaén had already been playing that role without being officially appointed, although the position is now institutionalized.
Miquel Iceta picks up the area of Democratic Memory of the federal leadership that in the last congress fell to Patxi López, who will now take the reins of the Parliamentary Group in substitution of Héctor Gómez. The Canarian deputy has rejected any type of relocation, be it organic or institutional, so everything points to the fact that he will also soon abandon his seat in the Congress of Deputies. Gómez has a life of his own, three degrees and professional spaces to return to after his brief experience as a parliamentary spokesman.
The PSC has moved all the possible springs so that Eva Granados, spokesperson in the Senate, would keep the position, but it is expected that there will be adjustments in the direction of the parliamentary group in the Upper House to reinforce a voice of little political volume. With the appointment of López, Sánchez intends to neutralize the furious speech of the right on the agreements with Bildu and for which the PP has returned to use victims of terrorism for partisan ends. López was the Lehendakari and Zapatero the President of the Government when ETA announced that he would stop killing, and this is a circumstance that no Socialist ever used in the partisan fray. Years later, the deputy for Bizkaia would face Sánchez and Susana Díaz in primaries in which the president's current chief of staff, Óscar López, was his campaign coordinator.
Pedro Sánchez, who communicated the changes on Wednesday afternoon to all those affected, closes with Patxi López a path that began to travel a year ago, after the reincorporation of his team of socialists with great organic experience and a long political career but who had played on opposing teams during the primaries. And incidentally, with the appointments of Montero and Alegría, he points out the path of the autonomous future of socialism. Not in the short term, but yes in the medium term.
The head of the Treasury was for months in the pools to succeed Susana Díaz at the head of Andalusian socialism, but she resisted like a cat on her belly and Moncloa promoted the candidacy of the then mayor of Seville Juan Espadas, after Lastra tried to do the same with an unknown Felipe Sicilia, whom he later elevated to party spokesperson. Many believe that the future of the Andalusian PSOE passes, not now but for the following Andalusians, through Montero, just like the one from Aragon will go through Pilar Alegría the day that Lambán announces his withdrawal, which, for the moment, is not planned. The same fate awaits Isabel Rodríguez, government spokesperson and former mayor of Puertollano, in Castilla-La Mancha when Page decides not to stand for regional presidency.
Sánchez seeks with these changes to press the accelerator with an eye on the municipal elections of 2023, in which the permanence in Moncloa is at stake, but also to give strength to the messages in defense of the proposals and reforms of the Executive, something that in the previous phase was conspicuous by its absence. The "chosen ones" will count for their new responsibilities with the support, if not the tutelage, of a management committee that will be chaired by Sánchez himself, coordinated by his chief of staff in Moncloa, Óscar López and who will also be joined by the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños and the spokesperson minister, Isabel Rodríguez.
Up to five ministers will be part of this sanhedrin that will direct the electoral strategy that formally corresponds to the party. Nothing, on the other hand, that has not happened before on other occasions in which the PSOE has been in government so that the party has referents and voices before public opinion with more power and authority inside and outside the party.
This is, with some adjustments that are expected within the Government well into autumn, the last bullet that Sánchez has to try to stay in Moncloa after the generals. "Nothing is lost," say the socialists, despite the wind in favor of the polls to a PP that already appears in the first position of the board in all surveys.
