The PSOE returns to the crossroads of domestic politics after the “adrenaline rush” with which one of its main barons summarizes the two days of the Summit for Progressive Global Mobilization in Barcelona. The third week of the trial against the former minister and former Secretary of Organization José Luis Ábalos will once again confront the socialists with the ghosts of a very recent past that they do not end up scaring away and with the gloomy horizon of the Andalusian elections, where the objective is not to win, but rather for Juan Manuel Moreno to lose the absolute majority. With this panorama, the influx of progressive leaders from the four cardinal points, with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at the helm, served as a collective balm and encouraged Pedro Sánchez to “recover the pride” lost. “It’s enough to stick knives in ourselves. We have to be optimistic, otherwise this will not work and we will never come back,” a minister insisted at the Fira in Barcelona.
Sánchez’s international success contributed to the socialists regaining hope despite the fact that they continue to do poorly in the polls. “It has been a weekend of ideological rearmament,” shared another colleague from the Council of Ministers, who confirmed in dozens of institutional and party meetings the condition of the Government of Spain “as a reference for progressives in the world.” “Everyone tells us the same thing, from Argentina to Belgium, and that is that we are transmitting hope and that an alternative is possible,” he added. The other idea that he took “to Madrid and its M-30” is that, “in the face of the extremely hard daily life and the noise of social networks, these meetings have helped us raise our self-esteem and show us that we are not alone.”
The emphasis of this personalized attack on Sánchez, to which Donald Trump has joined, is due to the Spanish exception: it is the only one of the main EU countries with a progressive Executive. The president of the United States distorted the economic data of Spain while in the plenary session of the Global Progressive Summit there were presidents and leaders from all latitudes and representatives of the different branches of the democratic left, from European social democracy to its Latin American side. “There is a very clear strategy of the PP that is now trying to transfer the European PP. We are left and that is why their obsession is to recover the Government of Spain, because they know that it is not just another government, but that it is the reference of all European and now also global progressivism,” explains Iratxe García, president of the Group of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. “In this effort they show their desperation, because they continually say that Pedro Sánchez and the Government of Spain are isolated. In Barcelona it has been shown that this is not the case,” adds the leader of the Social Democrats in the European Parliament.
The demonstration of force was not only a mass bath for Sánchez, who in Barcelona expanded his influence in the progressive world beyond the Socialist International that he has presided over since 2022. One of its effects was “the injection of spirit and energy” according to a regional general secretary, throughout the socialist ranks after the succession of electoral defeats and setbacks in the Cortes. “It helps us regenerate, it has been very good for us against so much zasca, in addition to sharing measures and experiences,” confided another heavyweight of the Executive.
“The atmosphere has nothing to do with what it was six months ago,” adds a prominent member of the PSOE leadership, referring to “the comatose state” in which the party, shaken by cases of harassment and corruption, faced the Extremaduran elections. “We have put more than 5,000 people in the plenary session, and they were not forced there, they were not reluctantly brought there on buses. They were there because they wanted to and because they believed it. In the six hours that it lasted, there was not a free chair,” adds a member of the federal leadership. “We are not so bad, we are leaders in the world, although that does not mean that we are going to throw up our hands. We cannot trust ourselves at all, but the No to War It was a knock and we have the right stumbling,” says a senator.
The concessions of the PP to Vox in exchange for the investiture this week of María Guardiola, accepting the “national priority” in public services and subsidies to the detriment of citizens of foreign origin, place Alberto Núñez Feijóo in an uncomfortable situation. “Spain was and is the daughter of migrants and is not going to be the father or mother of xenophobia and racist speeches,” Sánchez declared this Sunday in Gibraleón (Huelva), in the first of the six rallies he has planned between the pre-campaign and campaign with María Jesús Montero, where he demanded the regularization of immigrants that PP and Vox denounce. The president continued his counterattack against the extreme right and the “lacaya” right and also accused Feijóo and Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, of being “patriarch sellers” for their docility with Trump.
A MEP very much in the community ointment agrees that “the conversation has changed.” “We had a very bad time last summer and another very tough fight at Christmas (the release of Santos Cerdán from the Soto del Real prison coincided with a Sánchez rally in the Extremaduran campaign), but since then the tables have changed somewhat,” he explains. To give an example, the new Deregulation Department announced by PP and Vox for Extremadura is another vein. The portfolio, which aims to slim down the administration of the autonomous community, is inspired by the ultra-libertarian Javier Milei. “There is only one Ministry of Deregulation in Argentina, there is not one in any European government or any state, regional or local administration. It is nonsense. The PP is going to have to eat very hard toads, impossible to digest, and which, at the very least, are going to cause a problem, as is being seen with its commitment to modify the immigration law,” highlights the community parliamentarian.
The organization of the first edition of the progressive conclave was attended by officials from the Sumar Movement, the Commons and ERC, according to socialist sources. “The change in mental state is that, psychologically, we have not come together to survive, but to lead the left in our battle against the extreme right. The alternative left is considering uniting in a candidacy so that Pedro Sánchez remains president. That is the question,” remarks a veteran deputy from the socialist bench of Congress.
