During the presentation of Tierra Firma, the second part of his autohagiography Manual de Resistencia, Pedro Sánchez exchanged a few jokes in public with Óscar Puente. In a Círculo de Bellas Artes packed with faithful, he revealed that he had made two important decisions in his life: "One, to quit smoking 20 years ago and, ten years ago, to put social networks in the hands of a community manager." The room laughed while the aforementioned Puente shook his head with the pout of a sulking mastiff ("The president knows that only I touch my nets," he would say later). That day Sánchez added, conspiratorially, that he had his style and the minister had his, "and he does it very well." A way like any other of saying "kill them all." It was December 2023, five months after having lost the general elections, but only 25 days since he was inaugurated.
If Sánchez found in a dividing wall between Spaniards the solution to entrench himself in power without a majority in Parliament, Óscar Puente had to be the archer to ensure that no one approached the moat. And the sniper dedicated himself to perpetrating a daily massacre from Twitter, a technological channel of aggression, rather than communication. What the former minister has brought to Spanish politics is fundamentally the use of verbal violence from those in power against ordinary citizens.
Puente's stupid ways are not incompatible with a long look at politics. Almost a year ago, interviewed by the director of EL MUNDO de Castilla y León, Pablo Lago, the former mayor of Valladolid left open his return to local politics: "The more I return to the city, the more desire I get." Lago, a great journalist, did not take the bait. Puente was taking pressure off the Bolaños, oscareslópeces and mariajesusesmonteros in the face of a race for succession in the PSOE that was already launched.
The former minister has not returned to Valladolid nor will he return. He has remarried, has become a father again (on the day of the blackout his eight-month pregnant wife was trapped in an elevator) and has acquired a property in an Alicante urbanization with a National Socialist denomination. Elche and El Campello is where he has sought recreation and there he has assured both parties that what he told Ser in August about his aspiration to succeed was true: "Sánchez is Michael Jordan but, if you have to risk it in a shot at the basket and there are three seconds left, I am not one of those who pass the ball."
That statement caused a certain interpretive stir in Ferraz. As if, as in his previous interview, he had dropped a decoy to divert the focus on a president who was facing the crisis in Ceuta after his well-deserved rest in Lanzarote. One objective and another - helping the leader and positioning for his succession - are compatible. There are those who understand Puente's tweeting obsession as a sick impulse that has not been cured. However, the former minister has always been clear that the person he addressed with his daily insults was not the critical journalist, the candid opponent or the pedestrian passing by, but rather the socialist member. Above all, the former minister was, is and will be a hero of the militancy of this PSOE transformed by Pedro Sánchez into a populist trench. No one doubts that if Sánchez retired after a defeat and Puente ran in a primary election, he would sweep the bases. The PSOE is like that now.
Meanwhile, the former minister has done his leader the only service he could: get off the train and use his back as a stepping stone to try to help the campaign find momentum with the "we are not all the same." Maybe Puente gets into a Peugeot in case Sánchez falls on 29N. There seems to be little car to carry 115 dead.
