As in the famous five days of reflection in April 2024, the PSOE has spent the last hours waiting for a momentous decision from Pedro Sánchez. If at that time the majority wish in the party was that he not resign due to the opening of a legal case against his wife, in this case from within their own ranks they have been encouraging him, if not directly pressuring him, both publicly and privately to press the electoral button now, which for practical purposes implies a high degree of probability that he will have to leave La Moncloa in the coming months.
The general feeling among the socialists, both in the party and in the Government, late on Sunday was that the President of the Government will call elections imminently. This very Monday, even. It is the scenario that was considered most broadly. However, Sánchez had not communicated his decision even to his hard core, after a weekend in which he continued his round of contacts with different people.
The socialists do not hide their pessimism regarding the examination at the polls, regardless of whether it is ultimately on November 29 or postponed until 2027, which was the initial intention of the President of the Government before having the option of trying to ride the wave of citizen protest over the housing problem after the votes of PP, Vox and Junts overturned his decrees in Congress with measures to try to alleviate it. However, in general terms it is believed that "the window of opportunity" that has opened with an issue that significantly mobilizes the left can contribute to the only realistic objective they aspire to: not hit a wall.
"The situation is difficult, but not desperate," maintains an organic official from an important PSOE federation, who trusts that they can obtain a "worthy result" like the one in 2023, when they achieved 121 deputies, not on their own merits, but benefiting from the disintegration process of Sumar in this legislature. "If we collapsed it would be very complicated to rebuild the party," he warns, trying to remove the ghost of its historical ground, which stands at the 85 seats they obtained in 2016 already with Sánchez at the head of Ferraz's leadership.
Yesterday the Government considered dissolving and issuing a new housing decree
There is a sector that raises the stake, convinced that it is even possible that they will be the first force in the parliamentary arc if Vox "continues eating ground" on the PP, a possibility that is not included in any survey, although in no case the arithmetic would allow the coalition to be reissued. This scenario, according to a territorial leader, would give them the opportunity to "counterattack with the argument of the illegitimate Government" that Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party has used against Sánchez for continuing in La Moncloa despite not winning the elections.
Regarding the day after the scrutiny for the general secretary of the socialists, a minority current of the party, but who has taken the measure very well for the person who has been president of the Government since 2018, he believes that he will remain as leader of the opposition in Congress and that he will "maneuver" so that the next legislature does not last four years. "Peter's successor is Pedro," summarizes one of its members. "Knowing his history of resistance, it is not ruled out that he will try again in the future," adds another.
However, a very large majority believes that this will be the moment in which the replacement process is activated, which, in any case - and even more so if it does not suffer a setback at the polls - would be supervised by Sánchez himself. Here opinions are divided between those who believe that he will anoint Óscar Puente, who, according to various internal sources consulted by this newspaper, has been "running" under the radar for months, and those who defend that the future candidate "has to be someone who recovers the vote from the center", so the Minister of Transport "cannot be the solution."
It could be approved in the Permanent Deputation
Four socialist barons have publicly pressured Sánchez since Friday to move forward with the elections. "There is a window of opportunity for citizens, who have awakened in a forceful, resounding way, to express themselves through the ballot box," said yesterday the Secretary General in Castilla y León, Carlos Martínez, in line with what Emiliano García-Page (Castilla-La Mancha), Álvaro Sánchez Cotrina (Extremadura) and Eneko Andueza (Basque Country) have also expressed publicly these days. Other territorial leaders have privately expressed their conviction that, although it is not a decision that is "not at all simple and has its risks," it is time to "move forward."
