Eduardo Madina and Pedro Sánchez emerge as the main candidates to PSOE’s leadership.
Gonzalo López Alba. Madrid
In August the PSOE will be 126 years old, during this time it has survived all kinds of situations and circumstances. It began its trajectory with a single elected official, a city council seat gained by its founder, managed to get the biggest absolute majority on record, 202 of 305 seats in Parliament in 1982, and is the party that has spent the most time in power during the post-Franco democracy, nearly 21 of the 37 years.
However, never before has it felt so threatened by the possibility of seeing itself relegated to an irrelevant position, a growing concern which is sweeping like a ghost through the organization, where for the first time there is an admission that one hundred years of life are not insurance against extinction.
The European election in May demonstrated that, against what had been maintained for decades, the PSOE does not have a secure electoral base. In November 2011 they reaped their worse results, with 28.73 % of the votes, but in May they beat their worse record, seeing their support reduced to a mere 23%. Trapped between the decadence of bipartisanship and the emergence of new political movements which jostle for space on the left (notably ‘Podemos’) under the leadership of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba the PSOE has moved from Intensive Care to Critical Care and the fear is that it will end up on a Terminal ward.
As has been pointed out by one of the most notable representatives of the old guard Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra, the ex president of Extremadura, “the problem with the social democratic parties in Europe, and also in Spain, is that citizens consider them part of the system and not an instrument with which to change it” (El País, 20/06/2014). Ibarra adds, alarmed, that these socio-political circumstances coincide with the fact that “the structures of traditional political parties have become circles of comfort” in such a way that “if a party is constructed so that the leaders survive, the party won’t be able to maintain anyone because the weight will be unbearable and the edifice will sink for good”. The PSOE finds itself submerged in this internal reasoning.
The socialists will choose between two candidates of Philip VI’s generation
Changing leader is not a panacea, but as Pedro Fernández-Vázquez points out in a study that references the Report on Democracy in Spain 2014 published by the Alternativas Foundation, “it is very relevant when it comes to understanding why the citizenry is willing to believe in a change of political offers”. This factor already anticipated the failure of the renovation led by Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, vice-President of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s last government.
The old guard’s wager to ensure Zapaterismo was forgotten failed, and the socialists are now looking for a replacement between the leaders of the 70s generations, which can be associated with the new king, Philip VI, born in 1968. The favourite was Susana Díaz, who has successfully taken over the Andalusian caliphate after the abdication of José Antonio Griñán, precursor of the string of abdications that have followed. However, the Andalusian President, who has not yet completed her first year in office, has stepped aside because she wanted a coronation without competition and the calendar did not fit her schedule.
Due to this, in the fight for leadership two deputies emerge as finalists; the Basque Eduardo Madina (1976) and Pedro Sánchez (1972) from Madrid, who has managed to neutralise the disadvantage in knowledge he began with, and now, thanks to the shift in his favour produced by the support that was directed at Díaz, is now neck a neck with his rival, who set out as favourite and has less fundamental support.
At this point it is important to take into account that the Secretary General of the PSOE will be elected, on 13 July, by individual secret ballot, by the membership of the party, which has been known to contradict its leaders. It might also be worth reading, again, the second part of Ibarra’s observations.
The consolidation of the new General Secretary will be dependent on the result of the next general elections
The position of the majority of the territorial leaders is very fragile and they prefer for the Secretary General to find himself in the same position, in order for them to be able to keep their positions –they will be going to the polls in May as municipal or autonomic candidates– and influence the make-up of the next socialist Executive. This same interest, though with different motivations, is shared by Díaz, whose future political trajectory still includes, sooner or later, making the jump to national politics, which could happen in 2016, when after the next general elections the PSOE will have to celebrate an ordinary congress; July’s is extraordinary. On the PSOE’s result in that election hinges whether the leader that is elected next month will become consolidated or if they will be just another transitional Secretary General.
Despite coming from the same generation, there are many differences between the two candidates that are shaping up as the frontrunners. While Madina wants to turn the party inside out, with changes of shape and substance, and has elaborated a project he has been working on for a long time, Sánchez follows a more classical pattern and is shaping his discourse as he goes along. The latter has managed to snatch from Madina the label of “the new”, but as the campaign continues it is likely that the internal debate will move to who represents positions that are more or less leftist, a portrait in which the PP media has already labelled Sánchez as the right of the party when they came out unanimously in favour of the Deputy from Madrid.
The race has only just begun. The first milestone will be reached on 27 June, which is the deadline for the collection of the necessary endorsements needed to make the candidatures official.
