If he loses, the president has no successor, unlike Feijóo, who could be replaced by Ayuso or Moreno
The new Spanish political organism that was born in 2015, and that eight years later continues to reproduce itself, has swallowed leaders with a hunger unknown in other times. In the month of December the crusher of his stomach will start up again to gobble up Pedro Sánchez or Alberto Núñez Feijóo. If the one who ends up in pieces is the President of the Government, the PSOE will return to one of its many internal journey phases to look for a replacement. But if the snack is Feijóo, everyone in the PP assumes for sure that they will choose between Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Juanma Moreno.
The future is uncertain both for the head of the Executive and for the leader of the opposition. The two face their first big test in a month, in the regional and local elections on May 28. What happens will mark them both. Many dogmas have fallen these years but the maxim that whoever wins the municipal wins the general ones still applies. But to that battle Socialists are presented without a relief for Sánchez. No one has yet filled the post of successor, despite the fact that the chances of losing are as strong as those of remaining in government.
This is something that worries some observers, a question that is asked in embassies that aspire to have the best information. There is no possible answer. Neither in the Government nor the PSOE there is a natural replacement for Sanchez. And this is something unusual in the history of the party. “Felipe had four or five possible candidates for secretary general on his team,” say socialist sources. And “Zapatero had a pair.” A difference that is corroborated by the journalist Fernando Jáuregui, whose latest book “La foto del Palace: el socialismo, de Felipe a Pedro y viceversa”, attests to his knowledge of the organization.
The PSOE, he points out, “has always had difficulties of relief” as proof of the hard confrontations between Joaquín Almunia and Josep Borrell, José Bono and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Alfredo Rubalcaba and Carme Chacón and Sánchez himself and Susana Díaz. “It’s a big party but not entirely hierarchically structured” · “González tried to control it and always had some barons and the Federal Committee against him.” Sánchez, he continues, “has established a Presidential government and a presidential party“. “There is no number two,” he stresses, although organically Nadia Calviño is in the Executive and María Jesús Montero in the PSOE.
There’s not even a number two
“Everything is new”, emphasizes the journalist, “nothing is like before”, but neither was it, he points out, the way in which the current socialist leader returned to lead the PSOE after “they kicked him out”. His circumstances, he explains, have been decisive and there is no such thing as that ‘two’ because he “did not have people he trusted” or those he had “did not measure up.”
Other people from the party consulted by this newspaper agree that “indeed, it is the first time that in the PSOE Executive there are practically no no one with political weight”. For some it is due to the fact that “he has not wanted the grass to grow around him”. But not everyone considers that the lack of a replacement and the difference that Feijóo does have potential successors is an “anomaly” because, they maintain, “in the PSOE there is never a plan B.”
“Institutional power counts more in the PP than in the PSOE due to the weakness of the leadership of its bases,” they defend. Ayuso, Moreno and Feijóo himself confirm this but in the PSOE, they point out, Bono and Díaz “showed up and lost”. “Circumstances will now determine the required profiles,” they conclude, to slip that he will not necessarily be a baron.
Since it is not possible to unravel what will happen on the 28M and even less in the general elections at the end of the year, the debate has not fully hatched in the PSOE. It is talked about very softly but it is talked about. There is an army of people, disenchanted or retaliated by the president, waiting to act if he does not remain in Moncloa. “To start a new time we have to see how the previous one ends”, say socialist sources. Although for some it is already very clear that Sánchez “it came in with a bang and it will go with a bang”. “Nothing will be easy or peaceful.”
And while some consider that the replacement in the leadership of the PSOE it does not go through a baron, others instead defend that “the only possible succession would come from the hand of some regional president”, of those who survive the regional elections. “They would have leadership and legitimacy.” “Even if it was to lead the transition,” they say.