The number three of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, as a deputy only a few hours after a demolition report of the UCO was known that includes explicit conversations about alleged payment of commissions for public works. Researchers accuse him of “managing” at least 620,000 euros in bites. Cerdán has been in La Moncloa with Sánchez before announcing this decision, so everything indicates that he has been the leader, who had defended him until the last minute, which has demanded the resignation.
In a press release without party logo, Cerdán maintains his innocence and ensures that he resigns “to be able to devote himself to his defense” and that he has never “committed any illegality.” The former Secretary of Organization of PSOE is willing to collaborate with justice and will voluntarily appear on June 25.
Sánchez thus delivers the most important head, that of their number three, but some leaders consulted believe that it is not enough, that they will have to make more decisions. Shortly before 16.30, the PSOE has announced that Sanchez will offer a press conference at 17.15 from Ferraz.
This time the crisis is not like the others. Sanchez has become accustomed to living in the storm and surviving all kinds of apparently impossible political situations for seven years. But this time the sensation as in the partners of the majority is different. He is already the second secretary of Socialist Organization involved in a serious case of corruption, with a demolish report of the UCO that has left the government in KO, the PSOE and the partners of the majority, who requested Cerdán’s head, something that has already happened, but also that Sánchez gives explanations and ceases to be “hidden”, in expression of Gabriel Rufián, of ERC. The president has not answered any questions from the press a month and a half.
Add, the minority partner of the coalition, expressly requested that Cerdán and the position of secretary of organization in the Socialist Party. Several partners are being very hard, especially we can. Others, like Junts, rule out supporting a motion of censure. Alberto Núñez Feijóo does not want to clarify whether he will present it, but points to the seriousness of the situation.
The motion of censure seems difficult, but most will also have many difficulties to stay in this situation, because several partners remember that this government came to power in 2018 to end the corruption of Mariano Rajoy, and for many of them it becomes very difficult to sustain support if there are no very drastic decisions, beyond the resignation of Cerdán. Some speculate with a deep remodeling of the party and also from the government. Former Minister Alberto Garzón even proposes that Sánchez put Podemos in the Executive to face the rest of the legislature. It seems unlikely in any case that Sánchez wants an electoral advance at such a hard time for his party and for the progressive electorate.
During the last hours, especially on Wednesday night and this Thursday morning, both the Government and the PSOE decided to gain time and answer that they had to see the UCO report, that there could be some misunderstanding, which was not possible. Sanchez maintained until the last moment his trust in a key person in his power structure, much more than a number three of the party.
Cerdán accompanies the president since his first battle in the 2014 primaries, which is discussed in the conversations with Koldo García to rise votes. And he has so much confidence in him that he is the person who sends to Switzerland to negotiate with together every step of the legislature, including the investiture, in which his work was decisive to achieve the pact with Carles Puigdemont.
With José Luis Ábalos, Sánchez was able to say that he had separated him from the hard core of power long before the scandal, in 2021, and that he had quickly asked for the seat. It was precisely Cerdán who asked him at his home in Rivas Vaciamadrid.
But with the current secretary of Organization that argument is not worth it. Sanchez has defended him until the last moment and especially made a decision that turns against him a few months ago and that many leaders and members of the Government now consider the time, completely incomprehensible: he confirmed it as secretary of the organization in the federal congress of December in Seville, when there were many rumors that he would seize precisely because of his proximity to Koldo case, Because he maintained a close relationship with Ábalos and with Garcia himself, who came from Navarra like him and whom he had introduced in the party as the driver of the leadership.
The details of the report, the conversations with Koldo speaking of money, even possible mistress in the primary, have left the government and the PSOE, where they move in a total bewilderment. No one has just understood how Cerdán could present themselves in Congress and speak naturally before the press denying the accusations when he should know those conversations in which he says he is not recognized. Cerdán spent almost all morning in his seat sending and receiving messages and reading the report, although he later told the press that he had not read it.
Another issue that baffles different leaders consulted is that Sánchez did not have information on the content of this demolish report and maintained until the last minute his confidence in Cerdán, something that, therefore, takes away any firewalls and directly affects him by the political responsibility of having kept him in the post and confirmed in the last congress. Sánchez’s surroundings insisted that the only information they had was the one published by the press.
Sources from the president were all night on Wednesday and Thursday morning asking for time, calm, until you know the content of the report. Cerdán maintained his innocence to the leader and Sánchez decided to believe it until the last moment. But after knowing the devastating content of the text and conversations, the entire immediate environment of the president locked himself in a silence, prelude to drastic decisions, until the resignation of Cerdán was announced, which will finally not offer the press conference he had promised.
The leaders consulted, among whom there are members of the PSOE dome, deputies, senators and territorial leaders believed before the decision that the situation was “unsustainable” and there was only one possible option: “Santos has to resign,” summarized a member of the federal executive, as the ex -number three and former deputy has finally done. “With two corrupt organization secretaries, the conclusion is that you are not viable as general secretary,” he adds a former territorial leader who already directly points to Pedro Sánchez as responsible for the alleged corrupt plot “climb” to the PSOE dome itself.
“This is brutal,” he said as Congress left a member deputy of the Federal Committee, the top decision body of the PSOE. Ferraz contemplated convening the committee in early July, but that scenario is now in the air. The mood on the socialist bench was bleak. “Silence has been sepulchral, WhatsApp groups do not emit, nobody writes in them. People are in shock“, Summarizes a parliamentarian, who recalls that the UCO report has been known in a week” already tragic “that began with the loss of
The group of WhatsApp from the Federal Executive of the PSOE remained silent at the time of publication of this information, from Tuesday night. In the last message, after 22.00, Ferraz transmitted that Cerdán “has not participated, much less influenced, in public works awards. He has never charged a commission for it.” “When the entire report is known, Santos Cerdán will give all the necessary explanations so that once and for all their name and honorability they stop being mixed daily with cases that have nothing to do with their person,” collects that WhatsApp message, according to different sources of the executive in conversation with the country.
Emiliano García-Page, referent of the criticism of Sánchez, has not yet pronounced. The president of Castilla-La Mancha called his team on Tuesday to some spiritual exercises in Ciudad Real. The Vice President of the Board, Josele Caballero, has acknowledged that the UCO information “with concern, with anxiety and surprise” is living. “We want it to be clarified as soon as possible, that there are the explanations that have to be given and that any questions are cleared in this regard. It is forced. At the same time we have to express our confidence in justice. It seems rhetorical but we must transfer message of trust in justice. If we question it we will be undermining a fundamental value of democracy,” he said before the resignation.
The former president Felipe González has aligned with the Baron of the PSOE in his request that the general elections be before the regional and municipal ones of May 2027. A position that more and more socialist positions share, over all mayors, the most interested in that their management is not affected by “national politics” – euphemism to which several resort to referring to the pacts against nature with the independentistas as Junts – and the cases of corruption that according to the UCO implies Cerdán fully with Ábalos and García. An councilor thinks that the scenario does not leave margin: “The president has to summon after summer, you have to think about the party. It is unsustainable for the mayors and drag us … Look that I am not from Page, but he has said what many think in private.”
“The report we just met explains the inaction with Leire [Díez] Why was it reacted so slowly? It was something that we all asked and it was not explained as we should, ”says a provincial secretary for the” damage “to a centenary party.” The halo with which we arrived at the government in 2018 as the solution to corruption has been cumbersome, “he reflects.” And we have run out of a story. Not everything can be a persecution, ”intervenes another provincial leader.
