A year ago, the PSOE of Madrid A new stage opened after the resignation of Juan Lobato, with the proclamation of Óscar López as general secretary, without any participation from activists. It was the decision of Pedro Sanchez … try to stop Isabel Diaz Ayuso and the party said amen. No more candidates presented themselves in the possible primaries. Today, twelve months later, the parliamentary group in the Assembly is mired in discouragement, due to the lack of strength of the party in Madrid, without any form of autonomy in relation to Ferraz and Moncloa and plagued by scandals, not only corruption, whose effects reach Vallecas.
A year later, Juan Lobato He continues to attend plenary sessions of the Assembly with discipline. The party leadership stripped him of all responsibilities, positions and roles in parliamentary work. He is a rank-and-file deputy, who does not even have the possibility of speaking in plenary sessions. Not a single question during these twelve months. “They cornered him, they didn’t let him do anything in the Assembly,” say socialist parliamentary sources. He could not even be spokesperson for the Commission on the Status of Autonomy, as he wanted, and remained a member. His last recorded initiatives were several questions addressed to Ayuso, before resigning from his position as leader of the Madrid PSOE and parliamentary spokesperson. He had to remove all five questions.
Lobato is not seen in the Assembly in groups of deputies or during meals with his friends. Not even sharing coffee. “He doesn’t plot or try to create a group around himself. “He made himself available to the party for whatever it needed,” we commented in the Assembly. “The problem is that they don’t need him in Ferraz”, at least in the Assembly. In the Senate, Lobato can breathe a little more freedom. He retains his seat, does not intend to leave it for the moment and continues to actively participate in five commissions, which are his favorites due to his own professional profile: Treasury, Economy, Budgets, Autonomous Communities and Constitutional.
The former secretary general of the PSOE of Madrid maintains a discreet profile in the Regional Parliament of Madrid. At his seat, he rarely discusses with his colleagues, applauds when he plays, participates without fail in votes and is usually not absent from any plenary session. He seems to be patiently waiting for his moment. In silence, without making noise. Close sources indicate that he has already ruled out running in his party’s primaries, scheduled for next year. “It’s not his time, he knows he has nothing to do as long as Sánchez continues to control the game. “It would be like facing Ayuso and Sánchez at the same time, and I would have everything to lose.” And when Sánchez falls? “That will be another story. If he had the opportunity, it would be there. These same sources specify that the differences between one and the other are not ideological: “It is possible that Lobato is more to the left than Sánchez. » Both are distinguished by the two other pillars: forms and honesty. That’s the difference,” they emphasize.
The Assembly’s socialist parliamentary group was formed more than two years ago with Lobato, who was the party leader in Madrid when the electoral lists were drawn up. All of them, with a few exceptions, were “close” to Lobato, including the spokesperson who replaced him, Jesús Celada, who later resigned his seat, tired of the continued political feud and the lack of confidence he perceived in the new leadership, and the current spokesperson, Mar Espinar.
The spokesperson in the Assembly “has no autonomy, she follows Ferraz’s directions without deviating from them”
The only person who accompanied Lobato in his most difficult appearance, when he faced Ferraz from the Assembly, was Espinar. Óscar López counted on her as his spokesperson. Because? “There wasn’t much else to choose from and Mar is very disciplined within the party. It’s valued. “He followed Ferraz’s directives without deviating from a single comma,” say socialist sources. “He has no autonomy,” say people in the ranks of the PSOE. Espinar’s interventions during the plenary sessions are perfectly guided by Ferraz, who has eliminated press conferences on plenary days to avoid taking risks. From now on, the PSOE is the only party that does not appear before the media on Thursdays in the Assembly. During the spokespersons’ meetings, the other parties view with some perplexity the policy of “sitting down” practiced by the socialists, who fight just hard enough for their initiatives and sometimes not even. “It’s like they’re saying: really, what’s the point?” In the group are other deputies who were once considered possible spokespersons, such as Javier Guardiola: “He grew up at the feet of Santos Cerdán and Paco Salazar… That says it all. Of course, it wasn’t the best option and now it’s even less so. Espinar, who is capricious by nature, as we see every Thursday during control sessions, “endures through firm obedience” to the party, they comment.
Precisely, the fall of Cerdán and all the scandals around Salazar shook the socialist parliamentary group in a way that had not happened in other cases during the legislature. The party is “in shock”, hit where it hurts most and “disoriented, not knowing whether Sánchez is in control of the situation or not”. “Before people obeyed blindly, now there are doubts about what is being done and whether there is a plan behind it,” they say.
In this state of generalized decline in morale, the role of Óscar López at the head of the Madrid PSOE does not contribute to improving it. The minister “is not there”. It does not appear in the Assembly, nor even in relevant debates such as the state of the region or the budget. “This does not appear in local groups either,” they criticize within the party. Ultimately, the consulted sources conclude that López arrived at the regional PSOE to do Sánchez’s job in Madrid against Ayuso. And the party, which has not governed for 30 years, is suffering internally. “He doesn’t know the party inside, he doesn’t know what’s happening in the cities.”
López has an internal ally when it comes to being the “executor” of Sánchez’s strategy on the battlefield of the Community of Madrid with the objective fixed on Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Government delegate Francisco Martín, who previously worked with Bolaños at the Moncloa Palace, is the other Sanchismo striker in the region trying to overthrow the regional president. Within his party in Madrid, in the critical sector of the current line, he is defined as follows: “He is a mercenary under the orders of Sánchez.”
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