Ángel Gabilondo and Pedro Sánchez, in the presentation of the candidacy of the head of the PSOE list for the regional elections in Madrid on May 4.PSOE / EVA ERCOLANESE / PSOE / EFE
The significance of the electoral battle on May 4 in Madrid, where the PP has governed since 1995, has led Pedro Sánchez to personally design the candidacy of Ángel Gabilondo.
The President of the Government and Secretary General of the PSOE has opted for a profound remodeling of the list, promoting young profiles with management experience in the starting positions.
Sánchez pursues two objectives: to rejuvenate the socialist bench, with an average age of 55 years, to gain attractiveness in the urban vote, and to lay the foundations of a future project for 2023 if the right retains the Community.
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The initial reaction of the PSOE of Madrid when Isabel Díaz Ayuso called the electoral advance was to opt for continuity.
Make the minimum and essential touches on a list that, after the formation of the coalition Executive with United We Can, had already lost muscle after the plethora of signings of regional deputies in positions of responsibility in the Government.
Pedro Sánchez, on the other hand, has seen the ideal opportunity to thoroughly renew Gabilondo's candidacy.
"The aim pursued is ambitious: to demonstrate, with age profiles from 30 to more than 40 years old, with experience and with desire, that we are qualified to govern the day after the elections," summarize sources from the campaign team.
"Comrades from communities where the PSOE is the hegemonic party and it is normal for it to govern, such as Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura or Asturias, they often tell us that in Madrid we think of the lists in an organic key.
Distributing positions according to internal currents, groups ... Assuming that we will lose.
And if you think like that ... Well, that's how it goes ”, a veteran hardened in a thousand internal fights of the PSM delves into that idea.
The preparation of the PSOE list -which is approved this Friday and will be presented tomorrow-, especially of the first ten positions, represents a revolution orchestrated from Moncloa itself.
She will be overwhelmed by profiles of middle age who during Sánchez's term have been responsible for secretaries of State such as Hana Jalloul (41 years old),
number two
, in Migrations, or Irene Lozano (49 years old): the five on the list is the secretary State of Sports and president of the Higher Sports Council.
The same happens with number seven on the list: Jesús Ángel Celada (44), general director of Disability Policies, according to sources from the PSOE to EL PAÍS.
All three will step down from their government posts on Tuesday.
If the PSOE relieves the PP in the Real Casa de Correos, headquarters of the Community, it is taken for granted that they will sit in the Governing Council of Gabilondo.
If they do not give the numbers, Gabilondo will give way to the new generations.
Its function will be to erect an Executive in the shadow and lay the foundations of a consolidated project for 2023. "We need the left, youth, strength, experience and desire," Gabilondo, winner of the 2019 regional elections, summarized this Thursday. The occasion on which the PSOE succeeded was in 1987—, the qualities it wants for its project.
The decision to place Pilar Llop (47 years old), president of the Senate, as number three instead of four according to the usual order in the rack lists responds according to the sources consulted from Ferraz and La Moncloa to her institutional profile as the fourth authority of the State .
And it also sends a message to the female vote, one of the strengths of the socialists.
The key to 4-M will be which parties and blocs mobilize their voters the most.
In this context, in which the entry of Ciudadanos can turn the result of the elections around - Gabilondo was not president in 2015 because IU did not exceed 4.1% of the votes (132,000 ballots), below the 5% required to have representation in the Madrid Assembly—, the PSOE will pull its mayors.
Presence of municipalities
The importance that the Socialists attach to municipalism - they govern all Madrid cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants except the capital and Torrejón de Ardoz - will also be seen in the leading positions.
The mayor of Soto del Real, Juan Lobato (36 years old), returns to the autonomous Parliament (2015-19) as number four.
A State Finance Technician since 2010 and the first socialist mayor of the town since Eugenio Candelas, who was shot in the Civil War in 1939, Lobato appeared in the PSOE primaries in Madrid in 2017 in which the current government delegate was elected , José Manuel Franco.
Monica Carazo (36 years old), vice mayor of Rivas and coordinator of the Gabilondo campaign, will be the other standard-bearer for local power.
Like Lobato, he has also fired in the Assembly.
Manuela Villa (44 years old), graduated in Sociology from the London School of Economics and who has been responsible for content at Matadero, has the eighth place on the list reserved.
All a nod to the cultural sector, according to sources of the candidacy.
Villa is an advisor to the cabinet of the Minister of Culture and Sports, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes.
Number three on the 2019 list, last week the PSOE rumored the possibility that the minister would be included again on the list for 4-M.
But it did not materialize.
The PSOE candidate, Ángel Gabilondo, in an intervention in the Assembly in February.
At his side, Pilar Sánchez Acera and José Cepeda. Marta Fernández Jara - Europa Pr / Europa Press
The two deputy spokespersons in the regional Parliament, Pilar Sánchez Acera (46 years old) and José Cepeda (52 years old), will close the top ten places on the list with which the PSOE intends to recover Madrid.
Sánchez is optimistic and believes that the 4-M opens a unique opportunity.
Madrid's fame as a conservative community loses consistency if the results of the 2015 and 2019 elections are analyzed. They were resolved by a very narrow margin for the right, of one and three seats respectively.
The current 30 seats of the PP and the 12 of Vox force Díaz Ayuso and his partners on the extreme right to achieve 27 more seats - and not lose any - to achieve an absolute majority in the Madrid Assembly.
In La Moncloa, Sánchez is confident that the PSOE's moment has come.
More than 300,000 euros the first day of microcredits
The PSOE of Madrid has once again resorted to microcredits, a formula for which it opted for the first time in the general elections of April and November 2019, as a means of financing to face the electoral process on May 4.
Its promoter has been the manager of the PSOE, Mariano Moreno.
The campaign was launched on Tuesday.
In a single day, more than 300,000 euros have been collected, according to sources from Ángel Gabilondo's campaign.
Ferraz raised seven million through microcredits in the 2019 electoral campaign. The litmus test was in the general elections of April of that year with a campaign directed at his cadres and supporters in the face of the problems they were finding to finance themselves after the bankruptcy of Banco Popular.
Until its closure in 2017, it was the main financier of the great national parties.
The commitment acquired with the microcredits was to repay the loan with an annual interest of 2% once the State subsidy was paid.
2,454,200 euros were collected in this way.
The budget for those general elections was nine million.
Half a year later, microcredits were already one of the main sources of financing for the Socialists.
In less than two weeks, 4,722,143 euros were collected - double the number in April - to pay for the seven million budget for the 10-N elections.
The PSOE then offered an annual interest of 2.5%, half a point more than in April.
The microcredits, they insist on the PSOE, are not donations and can be subscribed by any militant, supporter or citizen with contributions from 100 to 10,000 euros.
The maximum duration is one year and with an interest on this occasion of 3%.