The PSOE expected a very hard blow, but that did not make the defeat any less traumatic. The decision of Miguel Ángel Gallardo to be a candidate, with the assent of Ferraz, despite the stigma of being prosecuted for allegedly linking Pedro Sánchez’s brother to the Provincial Deputation of Badajoz, was as risky as it was misunderstood. The punishment, which La Moncloa has been trying to encapsulate Extremadura for days, was a collapse of ten fewer seats, going from the 28 obtained in 2023 to 18 this Sunday. In percentage terms, the Socialists find themselves with 25.7% of the votes (135,991 ballots with 99.89% of votes counted), compared to 39.9% (244,227 votes) two years ago. The socialists have suffered an unprecedented demobilization of their electorate which results in the hegemony of the right in another of their historic bastions, as has already happened in Andalusia. The consequence is the opening of a colossal crisis in a federation synonymous with stability as the culmination of a bitter end to the year for the PSOE.
The PSOE’s organizational secretary, Rebeca Torró, was tasked with reporting to Ferraz’s Madrid headquarters. Torró acknowledged that this was a “bad result” and that the Socialists “failed to mobilize progressive voters,” reports Laura Llach. In a brief statement, without questions from journalists, the Organizing Secretary exposed the state of discouragement of the socialists, leaving “more in-depth analysis” for the meeting of the Federal Executive Commission which will take place this Monday. Gallardo, for his part, presented himself in Mérida and recognized that the result “is very bad, without palliatives” but did not resign and chose to urgently convene his regional executive this Monday to “coldly” analyze the data. “What worries me the least is my political future and the fact that the PSOE makes the best decision. I have summoned the regional executive, but above Gallardo is the PSOE,” he responded to the question of his resignation during an appearance at the regional headquarters, where the regional leadership bade him farewell to applause. Without knowing when he will convene the regional committee, where he has critics, Gallardo forcefully described the PP’s victory as a “lamentable failure”, because it did not obtain an absolute majority and “fattened” Vox.
Gallardo insisted on “discussing in a more moderate way” the results which “are probably not the consequence of one element but of several”. In this way, he attributed part of the responsibility to the cases of corruption and harassment of the PSOE at the national level and considers that they also contributed to the future of the socialist campaign. Gallardo also explained that he spoke with Pedro Sánchez this evening and that they had “a logical conversation between people who have a friendship, responsibilities” and “logically (it was) to encourage me.”
Even if the scale of the cataclysm did not cause the resignation of the secretary general, the atmosphere at the regional headquarters of the PSOE in Mérida was desolate. Elected in March 2024, Gallardo won two primaries but failed to unite a federation accustomed to the leadership, each with their own style, of Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra and Guillermo Fernández Vara, whose death in October further increased the feeling of orphan within the PSOE of Extremadura.
The most disastrous among the socialists of Extremadura had warned in recent days that the party could remain below 20 seats. Fernández Vara won the 2023 elections with 28 seats, the same result as the PP, but with more votes. It was a Pyrrhic victory, which did not allow him to govern with the sum of the PP and Vox. Despite this victory, it is the worst result in the history of the socialist federation, whose previous floor consisted of the 30 deputies of 2011 – the PP and IU pact led to the legislature of José Antonio Monago – and of 2015. The percentage of votes of the PSOE in the last Extremadura elections was 39.9%, its lowest record. It has now fallen to 25.8%. “We committed suicide. Who would think of judging a candidate? That’s what everyone told you. We were arrogant,” said a member of the socialist list during the closing meeting of the campaign.
The big question asked in the PSOE of Extremadura and in other socialist federations is why the federal leadership did not intervene to prevent Gallardo from being a candidate. “Why were there no primaries and everything was resolved so quickly with the approval of Ferraz? They knew that if there was, the federation would open the channel again and that Gallardo would not reach 50% support in Cáceres, but the voters return the lack of reaction to us with multiplied damage”, laments an important leader of the sector critical of the candidate. “We were hostage to the fact that Gallardo was prosecuted for having hired Pedro’s brother. If he had been prosecuted by someone else, we would not have reached this situation, but Pedro felt guilty. Ferraz lacked determination. And when you don’t act on something so obvious, what happens happens,” adds a heavyweight from the province of Badajoz.
The leaders of the regional leadership of the PSOE also emphasize that the PP was right to separate regional elections from municipal elections for the first time. María Guardiola’s decision was decisive in preventing the socialists from taking advantage of their territorial power. The PSOE governs in more municipalities (211) than the PP (139), in addition to the municipalities of Cáceres and Badajoz, but it was unable to take advantage of the attraction of its mayors, who did not go to the polls, to activate its electorate and remove it from abstention, demotivated by the legal process that Gallardo is dragging, whose trial was delayed from February to May. Another setback to his image problem is the manner in which he gained power in the regional parliament. The Superior Court of Justice of Extremadura overturned his conviction for “fraud of the law”.
“We went door to door in rural areas and on several occasions our people told us that they were sorry but that they were not going to vote. Add to that the fact that the conservative electorate mobilized very strongly in the cities, where most of the population is concentrated and where we were weaker. And they beat us,” summarized a provincial leader from Cáceres. An urban example of the tragedy of the PSOE is that of Mérida, where its mayor, Antonio Rodríguez Osuna, governs with an absolute majority. However, PSOE participation fell by 20 points. Like in Villanueva de la Serena, where Gallardo was mayor for 21 years and closed the campaign accompanied by Sánchez.
The net of corruption and harassment scandals perpetrated by the bodyguard which the President of the Government trusted from the 2017 primaries until the summer, also contributed to the collapse of the PSOE in a country he has governed for 36 of the last 42 years. When it is not Santos Cerdán who made veiled threats in the Senate, it is the entry into prison of José Luis Ábalos, the controversy over the five months during which the PSOE put in the freezer the complaints for sexual harassment against Francisco Salazar or the reappearance of Leire Díez in a new alleged conspiracy with Vicente Fernández, former president of SEPI, and Joseba Antxon Alonso, owner of Servinabar, the company Navarrese with whom he would have shared Cerdán.
Even if in La Moncloa we do not recognize him, the slap is not only intended for Gallardo, as he himself suggested. The women of Extremadura leave a worrying message to Sánchez in the face of the cascading elections that the PP has designed in Aragon, Castile and León and Andalusia in its strategy of exhausting the government. The proof that we could see the collapse coming is that the president brought forward his final assessment of the year to last Monday – the logic was that it was this Tuesday, after the last Council of Ministers of the year – so as not to let himself be conditioned by Extremadura. It is also no coincidence that he will announce this Monday the changes to come in the government after the calling of elections in Aragon for February 8. Pilar Alegría did not wait for her replacement as spokesperson for the Executive and the Ministry of Education to be known before launching into the campaign for the next elections in a month and a half. The express primaries from which Alegría emerged as a strengthened candidate, without an alternative having been presented, speak volumes about Gallardo’s comatose leadership and portray Ferraz for the absence of a uniform roadmap. The state leadership of the PSOE decided that there would be no primaries in Extremadura under the pretext of lack of time due to early elections, despite the alerts reaching them from inside and outside. However, the main interpretation is that the PP has not reached an absolute majority and will depend on a growing Vox.
Critics of Gallardo, with the province of Cáceres transformed into his Gallic village, recall that Gallardo’s great regional supporter was Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra. One of his oldest critics remembers that the former president made Fernández Vara cry in a regional committee in 2011 after obtaining 30 seats and losing the Board of Directors because of the unholy alliance of the PP and the IU. “What are you going to say now?” he said sardonically as the countdown confirmed the bad omens for the PSOE. Rodríguez Ibarra, one of Sánchez’s main public critics, said during the campaign that it would be “an injustice” for the Extremadura federation to pay for “the fault of others” in the elections, in reference to the cataract of the PSOE’s national scandals. “We don’t have to pay for the guilt of others,” he said. His wish is very far from coming true.
The PSOE is also bleeding from another wound: the growth at its expense of the candidacy of Irene de Miguel, the list of United for Extremadura is another of the blows of these elections is that Extremadurans no longer identify the PSOE with the Junta. The PSOE’s left refuge stings especially in a community where socialists were everything.
All election results in Extremadura
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