José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has reappeared this Friday in a PSOE campaign acting as a prophet in his land with a new mission that seems more impossible than that of the 2023 general elections: trying to put an end to the hegemony of the PP in Castilla y León, where it has governed uninterruptedly since 1987. “I come with my eyebrows, the firmness and the conviction to always support the PSOE. To the best party in the political history of Spain. I am proud of the party that most has done for democracy and that has modernized Spain the most and that now defends with Pedro Sánchez international legality against an absurd war,” the former president has burst into the campaign wrapped in the motto of No to War, that has been chanted and played on a giant screen, with which the Spanish rejected entry into the Iraq conflict in 2003. A slogan that Sánchez has rescued to justify the confrontation with Donald Trump for his refusal to allow Washington to use the Rota and Morón bases to bomb Iran.
“You have to be brave and patriotic to tell that president of the United States ‘No, in Spain and in its sovereignty the Government of Spain rules’. That is being a patriot!”, Zapatero asserted in his return as a shock to the political front line at a rally in León capital with Carlos Martínez, the candidate for the presidency of the Junta, after limiting his presence in the Extremaduran elections to the pre-campaign and disappearing in those of Aragon. “The Iranian people are being harassed by the schoolyard bully who ignores all international legality. I am proud to share a microphone with someone who taught us a lesson about our country’s reaction against the Iraq war and bringing troops from that country,” said Martínez, who was elected territorial leader a year ago.
Zapatero’s return occurred four days after his appearance in one of the Senate’s investigative committees in which he acknowledged charges of 463,000 euros spread over six years for written and oral consultancies to the company Analyze Relevante, owned by Julio Martínez, a businessman accused in the Plus Ultra case. The socialist leader denied having committed any irregularity or illegality or that he was a lobbyist before warning the PP senators that he felt “at his best” to participate in the Castilian-Leonese campaign. “You are a person without blemish, they wanted to silence you José Luis,” Javier Cendón, provincial secretary of León, summarized the general feeling amidst applause from the 800 militants and sympathizers who followed the event at the Luis Vives sports center. “I belong to the Zapatero generation, you have never left us behind, you have never stopped being a soldier, you have always been on the side of your party and we will always thank you,” thanked Nuria Rubio, deputy secretary general of the federation.
The former president of the Government has resumed from the first moment his role as a great agitator of the socialist electorate since three years ago he made them believe in a comeback in the legislative elections in which almost no one believed. “The two rights are patriotic but when the president of another country speaks they follow like chickens. And they can’t stand Pedro Sánchez, but he has become the reference leader for democrats and progressives around the world,” Zapatero stressed. Sánchez trusts that it will happen as with the recognition of Palestine and progressively more countries will turn towards his position, as even the far-right Giorgia Meloni has done in Italy.
Zapatero has taken advantage of the event – the PSOE is closing several of them in the final stretch of the campaign in provinces such as Segovia, where they gain one seat per population to which the socialists aspire – to claim victory over ETA during his Government. “We put in the effort, the faith and we achieved an end to terrorist violence under my government, yes, under my government, and peace since then in Spain,” he stressed. But it has also adhered to the nature of the campaign itself and has gone to the clash against the Leonese People’s Union (UPL), which in 2022 snatched two deputies from the socialists. “There is a lot of talk here about Leonesism. With humility, I am going to say that the greatest Leonessian has been Zapatero because he is the one who has done the most for León. The rest are songs,” he said, referring to himself in the third person.
UPL was the force with the most votes in the city of León with 17,671 votes (in total it obtained 47,952), followed by the PP with 15,027 votes and with the PSOE in third place with 14,333 ballots. In 2019, on the other hand, the Socialists won in the city with 20,500 supports – almost half of the 47,950 garnered in the entire province -, 3,000 more than the Popular Party and more than doubling the votes of the León party (8,200 out of a total of 26,700).
“The PSOE is a Leonese party because it is the one that does the most for León,” added Zapatero, who has highlighted that he has been a member of the León group “since 1978.” The mayor of León, José Antonio Díez, is also the general secretary of the group – the largest in the community with almost a thousand members of a federation with about 10,000 members – and one of the socialist references of Leonesism that is not exclusive to UPL. However, he has been excluded from the speakers at the rally, according to sources close to him, due to his confrontation with Cendón, one of the three deputies who was part of Santos Cerdán’s core in Congress. On March 15, the decision is between more of the same or change,” Martínez concluded.
