The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, seeks to take another step to try to solve the open crisis in the PSOE due to the case of Francisco Salazar. Sánchez has decided to dismiss Antonio Hernández, number two of Salazar in Moncloa, from his position as director of the Political Coordination department in the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government, as this newspaper has announced and has been able to confirm from Executive sources.
Hernández will also leave the executive of the PSOE of Andalusia, where he held the Secretariat of Data, Analysis and Foresight. On Salazar’s team in La Moncloa he was on the statistics, analysis, electoral strategy, electoral analysis, surveys team. According to government sources, Hernández’s departure has been agreed with him and will become effective in the Council of Ministers next Tuesday.
Sánchez broke his silence last Saturday about , which affects someone who was a very close collaborator of the president. The growing unrest in the party due to the leadership’s inaction after the allegations of harassment against Salazar became known caused the PSOE leader to be forced to apologize.
Salazar was in Sánchez’s closest circle since 2017 and until, in June, several complaints of harassment by women against the Andalusian politician became known. In a group in Congress, Sánchez admitted “in the first person” responsibility for the “error” that the PSOE has committed by not contacting the victims for six months, despite the fact that two of them had registered their complaint in the channel enabled to do so. The complaints were presented in July by two workers with membership cards from the La Moncloa complex, but the group did not give any priority to their resolution. This situation has caused deep unrest within the party and many officials have asked to take this case to the prosecution. Sánchez denied in Congress the “collusion” with Salazar and rejected that there was any intention in the “error with the speed, in the interaction” with the victims. Since July, the Anti-Harassment Office has not made any progress in their processing and has not even contacted them. The consequence has been a storm unleashed and fanned not by the right, but by party officials. Feminist leaders such as, have been the first to demand public explanations from Ferraz.
The president assured that the PSOE cannot go to the Prosecutor’s Office with this case, which was from the leader’s hard core, because it is not legally possible as these are anonymous complaints. It has to be the victims who do it, he assured, but the PSOE will now speed up the entire file and help them if they want to do it.
