Hopes for an end to Spain’s nine-month political deadlock have risen after the shattered Socialist Workers’ party deposed its leader over his pointblank refusal to allow the acting prime minister to form a government.
Pedro Sánchez, who had fought to retain the leadership of the PSOE since a coup against him erupted this week, stepped down after a long and bitter meeting of the party’s federal executive committee on Saturday.
His plan to hang on to his job by holding a leadership contest in three weeks’ time was eventually rejected by 132 votes to 107 at the end of an 11-hour session that laid bare the chaos and anger at the heart of the PSOE.
Shortly afterwards, Sánchez announced his resignation and the party was put in the hands of a caretaker leadership that will have to decide soon on its next step as a deadline looms for avoiding Spain’s third general election in just over a year.
Sánchez had consistently argued that the party would not do anything to support or facilitate the return to government of Mariano Rajoy’s conservative People’s party, on the grounds that the PP had wrought too much damage on Spanish society and was hopelessly mired in corruption scandals.
It was a stance that infuriated not only many voters – and the media – but also his adversaries within the PSOE who blamed him for the party’s disastrous electoral performance.
“As I said yesterday and as I’m saying again today, my parents taught me that the most important thing is keeping your word,” Sánchez said. “That was my word, which I gave to all the members and to the federal committee, too, when it came to the party’s position on Rajoy’s investiture process.”
On Wednesday, hours before half of the executive committee resigned to try to force Sánchez out, the party’s former leader Felipe González accused him of going back on an assurance that he would allow Rajoy to form a minority government following a second inconclusive election in June.
Like many in the party, González urged Sánchez to let Rajoy govern. Susana Díaz, the leader of the PSOE in Andalucía and the candidate most frequently touted as Sánchez’s successor, also insisted that the needs of the country had to come before the needs of the party.
The PSOE now has a month to regroup and re-evaluate its position before King Felipe could dissolve parliament and call new elections to be held at Christmas.
Although the removal of Sánchez could help end the political paralysis, his departure is likely to prove a pyrrhic victory for Díaz and her supporters. The civil war that has torn the socialists apart will only serve to strengthen Rajoy’s hand and boost the appeal of Podemos, the anti-austerity party that has long dreamed of replacing the PSOE as the strongest voice of the Spanish left.
Pablo Simón, a political science professor at Madrid’s Carlos III University, said the PSOE had been left “mortally wounded” by the week’s events and in no mood for third elections in which they would suffer even further.
“The Socialist party is so weakened, so destroyed and so ripped apart that all it can do is limp on,” he said. “If it’s going to negotiate, it can only do so with its hands up.”
Reports suggest the PP will ask the socialists for far more than just a smooth investiture. Safe in the knowledge that he could use fresh elections to crush his party’s longstanding rivals, Rajoy is likely to extract the maximum possible gains from any deal.
“His conditions are going to be very harsh,” said Simón. “It seems he’s going to look for their support to make sure he has four easy years in office.”
He predicted those who had helped oust Sánchez were unlikely to find their efforts rewarded. “There’s a whole generation of socialist leaders who have damaged themselves with this move: Susana Díaz, Guillermo Fernández Vara [the PSOE president of Extremadura] and Eduardo Madina [a former leadership candidate] are all divisive figures within the party now,” he said.
“Whoever leads the party into the next phase needs to be someone completely new and unstained by the conspiracy.”
Simón said Sánchez’s replacement faced an almost insurmountable task. “The wound the PSOE has sustained is going to be very hard to cure and will need many electoral cycles to heal. I get the feeling that we’re heading for a long cycle of government by the right in Spain.”
