The municipal group of the PSOE in the Huelva City Council lost, last March, one of its eleven councilors. It was not, by any means, the first departure of a councilor. In fact, since the 2023 municipal elections, the Socialist Party had already lost eight others before, but Luis Albillo's departure was more painful and more symbolic. Painful because, unlike what happened with those who left before him, he did not leave his council record, but instead joined the group of non-attached members, so that not only did the Huelva PSOE lose a name, but, above all, a seat in the capital's corporation. And symbolic because Albillo was not just any councilor. With the last socialist mayor of Huelva, Gabriel Cruz, he was part of the government team as a delegate of Infrastructure and Mobility.
Albillo's resignation, despite being the ninth, has shaken the foundations of the local socialist group in a way that the previous ones had not done because, according to what has emerged, behind it are the internal disagreements on account of who will be the next candidate for Mayor, the until recently regional parliamentarian Enrique Gaviño.
In reality, the departures of councilors from the socialist group in the capital of Huelva began almost the day after the elections three years ago. The loss of the government to the PP and its transition to the opposition meant that four of the PSOE councilors, those who occupied positions 7 to 9 on the electoral list plus 11, did not even take possession of their minutes and staged a real scare.
Only five months later, there was a new resignation and another in February 2024, but the candidate who was to take office after this last march also resigned, as he would, in May of that same year, the number two on the list. In total, with Albillo's, eight desertions.
Although the Huelva PSOE has tried to minimize the impact of the departure of its councilors from the Huelvba City Council, the truth is that the loss of councilors is not exclusive to the capital, although the bulk of the resignations are concentrated here.
In just under three years, socialism in Huelva has suffered a real drain throughout the province, with around 70 councilors slamming the door. There are municipalities in which the electoral list has even been exhausted and they have had to resort to substitutes to fill the gaps, as is the case of the town of Trigueros.
The list of municipalities in which the PSOE has experienced losses is long, at least 16, and includes important town councils (in addition to the capital), such as Ayamonte (five councilors have left); Cartaya (five others); Aljaraque (four have left) or Almonte (one abandonment for now).
They maintain from the party led by María Eugenia Limón that desertions and forced replacements are a "normal and habitual" process for all political formations, but in the case of the Huelva PSOE it is a symptom of the evil that has been corroding it for years, the loss of institutional power of what was the most powerful political organization since the beginning of democracy last century. A crisis that has its most visible face in the electoral results, in that, election after election, the socialists have been losing support and power.
But returning to Huelva, the massive resignations of councilors that the PSOE suffers there is just a symptom of the crisis in which the once hegemonic party is mired. A crisis that has its most visible face in the electoral results, in that, election after election, the socialists have been losing support and power.
The 2015 regional elections were, so to speak, the last good times for the PSOE of Huelva. He was still all-powerful and in that province the socialist list obtained 40.96% of the votes, that is, six seats, compared to 26.45% for the PP, with half the number of deputies. It was one of the best results for the PSOE in all of Andalusia on that occasion.
In the 2018 regional elections the decline began, although the Huelva PSOE still surpassed the PP. He obtained 31.6% of the votes and four seats. And already in 2022 came the collapse of socialism, far surpassed by a Popular Party riding the enthusiastic wave of Juanma Moreno after his first term as president. The PP obtained the support of 42.72% of voters, that is six seats, and the PSOE only 27.39% and four seats. The Popular Party doubled its deputies and won in 56 of the 80 municipalities.
If the fall in the regional elections has been hard for the Huelva PSOE, it has been even more so than what they experienced in the municipal elections of 2023. For the first time in the democratic history of the country, the Popular Party achieved the majority in the plenary session of the Provincial Council, snatching from the PSOE an institution that no other government had known and a fundamental instrument in its territorial articulation strategy.
That of Huelva was, along with the councils of Seville and Jaén, one of the main institutions that the PSOE had been able to preserve in Andalusia, once the PP took away the Junta and most of the important town councils. After the fall of Huelva, the party now led by María Jesús Montero only retains the seats of Seville and Jaén.
Behind the crisis of the Huelva PSOE, say socialist sources, is also the false closure of the internal schism that it experienced during the Juan Espadas era. With the arrival of Montero and his determination to push towards directions of consensus and integration, a pact was put together in Huelva between the Susanistas and the current general secretary, María Eugenia Limón, which did not convince many.
In fact, they point out from that party, "today there are many people who have disengaged, the party is deactivated", starting with who was the reference for Susanism in this province, Ezequiel Ruiz. The sources add that "the same people" remain at the helm, without any effective renewal. And this has also translated into "disenchantment" and a loss of militants that is around 30%.
