Just five minutes of a speech of almost an hour. On tiptoe, trying to make it happen as unappreciated as possible, the Socialist General Secretary and Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has dispatched the changes in the leadership of his party with a list of thanks. Before the Federal Committee of the PSOE, summoned to ratify the modifications in the direction, this matter has been tangential in the open intervention of the head of the Executive.
He had been speaking for 49 minutes, in what seemed like a reissue of the debate on the state of the nation, when the president finally referred to the first fact that the Socialist Federal Committee, the highest body between congresses, has in its hands this Saturday: approving the calendar to elect the candidates with whom the formation will compete in the municipal and regional elections of May 2023.
“The PSOE has a clear priority: win the municipal elections and win the regional elections in the communities where they are held. We want to win, we know how to do it, we are the party that has done it the most times. We did it in 2019 and we are going to do it again, I have no doubt, in 2023”, the president cried out, to applause.
The fish was sold this Saturday, no one was afraid of course, since the dance of numbers was completed this Thursday. Adriana Lastra is already deputy secretary general of the Ministry of Finance, María Jesús Montero, Patxi López succeeds Héctor Gómez as spokesperson in Congress and Felipe Sicilia gives the voice of Ferraz to the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría. To all of them, as well as to Miquel Iceta, Iván Fernández and Juanfran Serrano, who gained weight in the new PSOE, he has thanked them one by one, for their battery number, for the work carried out or for the responsibility acquired.
“Play metro one more gear”
«You already know what we have to do: go for it all (…). It's time to put one more marche ”, Sánchez has entrusted to leaders aware that the PSOE interferes in judging the permanence in La Moncloa in ten months. The revulsive of Sánchez, who opted for a greater presence of the Government in the party and for profiles with experience, seeks a response to the electoral bump in Andalusia, where the Socialists lost three seats and saw how the PP won the absolute majority in their historical fief.
With that in mind, and with the wear and tear that the Executive assumes due to inflation in Spain, at 10,2 percent, Sánchez has concluded his speech with a message, in number of "all socialists", "to all progressives of this country”: “I propose that we go for it all”. Previously, the president reviewed the benefits of the "progressive coalition government" and insistently pointed out that the way out of the crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic and, now, "due to [Vladímir] Putin's war in Ukraine ” It would have been very different with the right in La Moncloa.
“We are not going to do as the PP governments did in previous crises: be weak with the strong and strong with the weak”, he encouraged, and added later: “We are not going to allow the suffering of many to be the benefit of some few. We are going to defend ordinary people above all else”. Sánchez has defended the social democratic recipe to deal with current inflation and has promised that, with the measures already underway or announced by the Government, the increase in prices will be "cushioned" in Spain "by three and a half points" .
Also, as the first vice president, Nadia Calviño, announced this Friday, she has promised that the PSOE and United We Can register the law proposal that will include the new taxes on banks and energy companies, announced by the president in the state of the nation debate. “We are going to prohibit companies from shifting costs to the working middle class of this country. It is going to raise 7.000 million euros in two years with those taxes”, she has reiterated.
Page, on Sánchez's pacts: "It hurts me that we can call someone a partner"
The tranquility of knowing in advance who leaves and who enters the leadership of the PSOE has been noted in the arrivals at Ferraz. What in other meetings of the Federal Committee was an obstacle course to avoid journalists, this Saturday was patience. All the barons allowed themselves to be photographed and some even hoped that a colleague would stop making statements to relieve him before the microphones. Everything has been a closing of ranks only differentiated by the different accents of those who used the word, until the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, was asked by the allies of the coalition government: "I today I am not here to talk about the partners because it even hurts me that we can call someone a partner. I don't know, I call a partner the one I can leave the key to my flat with when I go on vacation”.
In the first part of his speech, eminently green, he has called for action against the climatic climate with force, has again rejected the return to the use of nuclear energy in the transition to renewable energies and has assured that he will fight against any " imposition' from Brussels that obliges citizens to reduce gas consumption as well as households. “The climate emergency is accelerating and there is no excuse to park the ecological transition. It's now or never". Focused on management and trying to differentiate himself from the right, Sánchez has tried to recharge the batteries of his teammates. At stake is his stay in the palace.
