Sánchez urges to “consolidate leadership” in the communities “that even transcend the brand” of the PSOE

What happens in Galicia stays in Galicia.

At least that is Ferraz's claim, who limits the cataclysm of the Galician elections to the lack of a consolidated project despite his support for José Ramón Gómez Besteiro.

Pedro Sánchez's personal bet, the PSdeG candidate established a new negative record, losing five seats and almost 50,000 votes.

And that is pending the counting of the foreign vote.

The 14 deputies who until now marked the ground of the Galician socialists ended up being an unattainable objective in a campaign that seemed eternal.

The analysis that the President of the Government made in the PSOE executive that, as tradition dictates, meets every Monday after an election, was that the national debate, with the amnesty overshadowing everything, did not influence the result.

The test would be the transfer of those voters and seats to the BNG, without complexes in favor of the amnesty.

Emiliano García-Page gave a very different interpretation: “The product of these last elections was regional but the stew was national.

If [the PP] loses, the consequences were national, the beginning of decline.

If the opposite happens, the consequences or at least part of the reflection will have to be consistently national as well,” he remarked at an event in Manzanares (Ciudad Real).

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Where Sánchez did put the emphasis, in a "calm" and "calm" intervention in which he was seen "affected" by a much harder blow than expected and his affection for Besteiro - the internal tracking

warned

that going down to 11 seats, but never below double digits—was due to the need to “consolidate strong leadership” in the autonomous communities “that even transcend the brand” of the party, according to sources from the federal leadership consulted by EL PAÍS.

That is, they provide a plus and, in addition to the most convinced voters, they attract the more transversal and less ideologized electorate that usually decides the elections.

The general secretary of the PSOE highlighted that the main government party has very good cadres at the municipal level who, however, are not so numerous at the regional level.

For this reason he emphasized reinforcing the structure of the federations—teams in charge of the speeches, preparing the debates: Besteiro was supported by Alfonso Rueda and Ana Pontón in which they coincided on TVG—and ultimately supporting the leaderships. territorial limits of the party, reduced to a minimum after the electoral tsunami of 28-M.

The PSdeG candidate, elected in October, was penalized by the pull at the head of the BNG list since 2016, and therefore very consolidated.

Time proved the Bloc right: that year it hit the bottom with six seats before obtaining its best results in 2020 (19) and now (25).

“The vote was carried out in very territorial terms, as will happen again in Euskadi.

The fundamental key to regaining the trust of Galicians is long-term projects, it is one of the factors that could have affected them,” said PSOE spokesperson Esther Peña.

Since it lost the Xunta by one deputy in 2009 and the PP began to chain five absolute majorities, the PSdeG has launched a candidate in one election after another.

“You have to be patient and work will make the sun rise again.

The land, for those who work it,” Peña concluded.

The enigma is whether the socialists will not let themselves be carried away by the rush, as they have demonstrated tirelessly in communities like Madrid, where they have not governed since 1995. The general secretary of the PSOE of Madrid and candidate in the last regional elections, Juan Lobato, attributed the “ rise” of the BNG to “a candidate who has presented herself for the third time and has been working consistently.

People value that.”

The PSOE's attention to its federations occurs at a time of great territorial weakness, in which the sum with Unidas Podemos was insufficient compared to the PP's pacts with Vox in five regional governments and 140 town councils.

The socialists lost almost all of their territorial power on March 28, retaining three of the nine autonomous executives they presided over and a handful of provincial capitals.

Staying in the Government relieved the PSOE, which has not yet recovered from the blow it suffered in the autonomies and municipalities.

“We have been through a very difficult cycle since 2020, very adverse, very hostile, and that should provoke deep reflection to avoid an electoral cyclone that devastates much more,” García-Page added.

“June 23 was partly a trompe l'oeil,” says another territorial leader.

“Obviously improvable” campaign

Inés Rey was the first to break the ice after Sánchez in the executive session, which lasted two hours and in which there were 11 requests to speak.

The mayor of A Coruña and vice president of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) began by evaluating Besteiro as the best candidate before stating that, in her opinion, the campaign was “clearly improvable.”

That of the BNG was “digital” compared to the “analogue” of the PSdeG, which did not pay due attention to the urban vote, a progressive majority to which Pontón's candidacy was more attractive.

The councilor regretted that the Bloc took away a space from them, that of Galicianism, which was one of the pillars of the socialists.

María Jesús Montero and Santos Cerdán stressed the need to strengthen the PSOE in the communities.

The first vice president of the Government and deputy general secretary of the PSOE is of the opinion that in Galicia there will be very strong opposition work during the first two years of the legislature while Besteiro is shaping his project and, with these bases, that the two In recent years they have dedicated themselves to showing themselves as the alternative to Rueda.

The

number two

of the PSOE and the Executive indicated that she had not heard specific health proposals during the campaign, which was interpreted as an implicit criticism of the strategy followed.

Idoia Mendia did not deny the bad results but also recalled the “bad hits” of the right in Euskadi and Catalonia, where in the last elections the PP obtained six deputies – along with CS – and the same percentage of votes and three seats and 3, 85% of the votes respectively.

“There is no need to extrapolate,” she concluded about the grace measure and its impact on the regional governments.

Another Galician in the executive, Pilar Cancela, Secretary of State for Migration and head of the PSOE abroad —those votes will be counted next week, and their importance in Galicia is enormous, since they represent 18% of the census and led to the bipartite Government with the BNG in 2005—, intervened along a similar line as Rey, until Sánchez interrupted him asking for a federal analysis of 18-F, according to sources present.

The shifts requested by Arcadi España, Elisa Garrido, Manuel García Salgado, Sabrina Moh Abdelkader, followed one another focused on the analysis of the territorial state of the party.

The next to speak was Isabel Rodríguez.

The Minister of Housing gave as an example in her speech to highlight the autonomy and responsibility of the party federations that when she went to school her parents did not control whether she studied or not, since that was their obligation, and that they did ask her for explanations in the in case he got some bad grades.

After this reflection, Rodríguez observed, according to different members of the socialist leadership, that she would have gotten involved in the Galician campaign but she did not do so because they did not demand her presence.

This same conclusion is shared by other members of the Government, among whom it is surprising that one of the great values ​​and communicators of the PSOE, Óscar Puente, did not participate in any campaign event.

The Minister of Transport, who did not attend the executive meeting as it coincided with an event in Barcelona for the transfer of Rodalies, asked for “a deep and fundamental reflection” after admitting that the result in Galicia had been “far from expectations and than would be desirable.”

The Andalusian Ana María Romero was the only member of the PSOE leadership who intervened without focusing her intervention on the impact of 18-F.

The person responsible for the federal directorate of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries focused her speech on the rural protests that broke out a few weeks ago and opened another one against the Government four months before the European elections.

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