Miguel Angel Gallardo yesterday wanted to nip in the bud the doubts generated within the PSOE – both in Ferraz and Extremadura – about whether he is the best possible candidate to face Maria Guardiola on December 21 after the president of the Board pressed the early election button on Monday. Waiting for the date of the oral trial to be made official where he will attend, together with the brother of the President of the Government, David Sánchez Pérez-Castejónand nine other senior officials of the Badajoz Provincial Council, as being prosecuted for the alleged crimes of prevarication and influence peddling, for many socialists his candidacy is “a shot in the foot”, to which they add that he will be a “weak and lacking charisma” candidate who is not going to win.
To avoid such speculation, Gallardo designed an exhaustive and planned internal closing of ranks the next day after the names of the Extremaduran minister spread like wildfire. Carlos Bodyfrom the president of the Extremaduran Parliament, Blanca Martin and even of Álvaro Sánchez Cotrina, provincial president of Cáceres, as possible substitutes. Early in the morning, the general secretary of the Extremaduran socialists met urgently in Mérida with his Regional Executive, who approved that the candidacy process did not have to go through, as stated in the internal statutes, a Primary process. “This is an exceptional occurrence,” Gallardo later justified, appearing before the media alluding to the lack of time for it. And he added: «Indeed, I am going to introduce myself. “I have strength and ambition to make this land change, we go out to win.”
That he was forced to clarify and confirm his candidacy suggests the internal movements that have occurred in recent hours. Gallardo’s second step to shield himself was the convocation of the PSOE Regional Committee for today, which will designate him as the headliner, a decision that must be ratified by the Federal Executive in Madrid. Neither a new Primary process (the third in two years) nor an external candidacy promoted by Ferraz with such little room for maneuver would be accepted by the Extremaduran socialists, who would return to an internal battle that would end up squandering any electoral option.
The president of the Cáceres Provincial Council spoke along these lines, Miguel Angel Moraleswho urged his party to learn from the “mistakes made” and put the “interests of citizens before personal ones.” The debate was also closed Pilar Alegríaspokesperson for the PSOE: “The militants of that land have spoken clearly and I can only convey all my support to the general secretary.”
53 days before the elections and 20 days before the official deadline to close the candidacies, Ferraz will not object to Gallardo and will accept him “as a lesser evil,” according to party sources in Extremadura. “There is no time for change, nor for a ‘coup de effect’,” assume the socialists, who are clearly betting on a “closing of the line.” A leader explains it: “The party, in situations like this, usually unites and mobilizes like a pineapple and although we know that Gallardo is not going to win, there is the idea that it can endure a decent electoral result, without collapse, because the PSOE in this land has a large soil after so many years governing,” he explains. Another thing, he argues, “is that he manages to design a campaign capable of mobilizing the vote necessary to hold on, although the acronyms will be appealed to over the figure of Gallardo.”
In this sense, it must be remembered that the successor of Guillermo Fernandez Vara He has gone through two Primary processes to become general secretary of the PSOE. In both, he won the province of Badajoz easily, but lost in Cáceres on both occasions, where he has most of his critics. “Many don’t buy it, but in the end they will end up supporting it; what happens later, after the elections, if it gets a bad result is another thing,” they clarify.
This being the case, the hope in Ferraz and in the PSOE of Extremadura is that Guardiola does not obtain an absolute majority and that he depends on Vox again, even more strongly than in 2023: “Abascal is not going to make it easy for Guardiola to govern again and this scenario can turn against her and that is where she may have ‘departed’ for us,” explain internal PSOE sources.
On Monday, Gallardo considered that Guardiola wanted to bring forward the elections to take advantage of his delicate judicial situation and the fact that “the truth is not known” about the case. The judge Beatriz Biedma places him as the main person responsible for hand-picking the position to the brother of the President of the Government.