The PSOE will turn to Castilla y León against the PP in its first pulse against Empty Spain

The PSOE retrace his steps. To their liturgies and dynamics. To an autonomous campaign mounted from the regional leadership and with the help and direction of Ferraz, but not from Moncloa. That is the roadmap that is being handled from the heights of the party now that it faces early elections (again) in hostile land (also again): in Castilla y León, on February 13. The Socialists have learned from the traumatic experience of the Madrid elections on May 4, from a strategy that in their opinion was erratic and distorted the candidate, Ángel Gabilondo, and that was concocted by the then Chief of Staff of Pedro Sánchez, Iván Round, without participation of the regional structure. But he fell last July and the PSOE tries to bury his footprint. And his procedure. The goal now is build a campaign between the two directions, the federal and the autonomous, the one led by the Secretary General in Castilla y León and candidate for the Board, Luis Tudanca.

Because without a doubt the ballot boxes of 13-F in the largest community in Spain will focus the action of Sánchez and his party around the Christmas break. An anticipation of that climate was already seen this Tuesday in Congress, in the final debate on the Budgets, but the tension will increase in just a few days. The PSOE, which won the elections in 2019 —35 seats, 34.84% of the votes, by 31.54% and the 29 attorneys of the PP—, for the first time since 1983, but he could not govern due to the alliance of Alfonso Fernández Mañueco with Ciudadanos.

Marriage of convenience that was blown up just over a week ago. The Socialists face a worse prognosis due to the foreseeable victory of the regional president (the question is with what advantage and if it will depend entirely on Vox) and the challenge of the Spain Emptied. However, in Ferraz they insist that “there is party“Even though the last word has not been said. The latest polls place Mañueco close to the absolute majority (41 seats out of a total of 81) and draw a PSOE down, reaching 30 parliamentarians.

In the leadership of Sánchez they emphasize that it is still “organizing the campaign“with the direction of Tudanca. The official launch will arrive on January 7, at 10:30 am, with the first federal committee after the 40th Congress of the party. Ferraz had chosen that date to celebrate the exact two years of the inauguration of the president, the equator of the national legislature. But the call, almost totally telematic by the covid, has been reconverted and will also serve as a boost to Tudanca. The strategy is for Sánchez to be actively involved in the Castilian-Leon campaign. He and the whole party will do it, said the spokesman for the executive, Felipe Sicilia, on Monday, so that the socialists “win the elections again” and the community comes out of “ostracism” and stops being governed by a “rancid right” “.

The difference with Madrid

In the 4-M elections, Moncloa decided to involve Sánchez in the pre-campaign, but disappeared from the scene as the polls approached because Isabel Díaz Ayuso was looking for hand-to-hand with him to victimize herself and side with her true rival, Gabilondo. Now, Ferraz has not yet specified the level of participation of the Chief Executive, and is aware that Pablo Casado wants to make 2022 the year in which the change of cycle is visualized, to which the general polls point, after signing a victory first in Castilla y León and then, in June or October in Andalusia. The PSOE, although it contemplates both triumphs of the popular ones, insists that all is not lost and that, in any case, the legislative, at the end of 2023 (if there is no advance), will be played on a different terrain, with the pandemic behind and economic recovery underway.

Sicilia manifested in the federal headquarters the “absolute respect” for the platforms linked to the Empty Spain that may be presented, because the PSOE aspires to “win the trust of the citizens.” For the moment, the movements linked to the demographic challenge have announced that they will present lists in Soria, Palencia, Zamora, Salamanca and Burgos.

The socialist leadership, it is true, has not yet defined its discourse. But, for the moment, the Executive and the party choose to enforce the initiatives deployed from Moncloa. It is what the third vice president, Teresa Ribera, calls “fine rain”, the constant action on the territory, “not taking a photo one day and leaving, which is useless.” “What matters are the results, that people experience that there are different ways of doing things, not magic solutions or overnight,” says Ribera, in conversation with this newspaper.

His ministry approved in 2019 the guidelines for the National Strategy against the Demographic Challenge, which was intertwined with the recovery plan. The Executive has committed an investment of more than 10,000 million euros (around 10% of the plan nurtured with European funds) in a total of 130 actions aimed at fighting depopulation and to guarantee “social and territorial cohesion”. “A transversality that has allowed all the ministries to put on the glasses of the reality of the territories, of the rural,” says the Secretary General of Demographic Challenge, Paco Boya. The axes on which the Executive’s action pivots is to generate connectivity, digitization and mobility in small nuclei, as well as employment opportunities. Added to this is the decentralization of institutions that the Government is sponsoring, also in Castilla y León: Sánchez took advantage of the regional PSOE congress in November to announce two new centers, one in Soria and the other in Segovia.

Facts, and not “rhetoric”

The person in charge of Demographic Challenge of the PSOE leadership, Mayte Pérez, Minister of the Presidency of Aragon and provincial secretary for Teruel, is combative against the new platforms, due to the risk that the “common interest” is not guarded. “You cannot compose majorities based on blackmail. It is a weakness of the State.” “The most delicate thing is that in the face of what we have (inequality and lack of cohesion) there can be no cantonalism and what about mine”, Ribera abounds. “I am concerned not with the punishment we receive, but with what we are capable of transferring ourselves, with facts and with realities, not with rhetoric. With the fulfillment of the given word”, Pérez insists. “We must align the policies of the Government, of the communities, councils, city councils, businessmen, unions … If we want to be serious about this, it implies a paradigm shift “.

What is of course not a priority for the Government is a next call for the dialogue table, despite the pressure exerted by the ‘president’. Republicans want a meeting of the body for the first of the year and progress. Pere Aragonès warned last Sunday, in his Christmas speech, that he will look for “alternatives” if the forum between governments “runs aground” and “tangible results” are not seen in 2022. The Executive avoid putting a date on the table for now: the The focus is on the fight against the covid, on carrying out the labor reform in Congress – not an easy company given the opposition of the usual partners of the bipartisan – and on the campaign in Castilla y León.

“We are not in that right now”, initiates an important member of the Cabinet. “Nobody gives a damn – another minister abounds -. Not even the independentists know where they are going. They know there is no alternative. If they want us to meet, we will see each other, but there is no progress because they continue with the demand for a referendum [de independencia] and there is not going to be a referendum. “Nobody is aware that an appointment by the Government and the Government would be inconvenient for the interests of the PSOE in a region like Castilla y León, very conservative and in which the PP starts with a clear advantage. Recent history recalls the strategy followed: Sánchez only activated the pardons after the 4-M battle in Madrid, aware that any movement in Catalonia could ruin already low expectations for the PSOE, although the ground sank infinitely more than expected “The problem is not the date,” agrees the last minister quoted, “it is about what they want to talk about and what real margin there is to agree on.”

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Sicilia himself made it clear on Monday in Ferraz that there is no rush for the table. “We reiterate our commitment to dialogue and consensus within the constitutional framework. In that framework, and in that of dialogue and agreement, I am convinced that a date will be agreed.” But the concern of all, he added, both the Government and the Government, “is to combat the pandemic, face this new wave and that there may be a recovery of our economy.”

The focus, then, is elsewhere. Not so much in the Palau de la Generalitat and more so in the (difficult) conquest of Valladolid.