Absent from the 2022 Andalusian campaign, the last socialist president of the Junta de Andalucía, Susana Díaz, reappeared this Wednesday in Seville at an electoral event for the Andalusian PSOE in the campaign. It was in their neighborhood, Tardón, and in the Cerámicas Mensaque square, where a hanging with an image of the Virgin of Macarena still stood on a balcony, in a territory of Esperanza de Triana.
The socialist candidate, María Jesús Montero, has asked and wanted all those who have been something in the PSOE to participate in her campaign, to lend a hand, a phrase very typical of Díaz in his time as leader of the PSOE, until that expression became a declaration of war against the general secretary, Pedro Sánchez. What happened is known and the PSOE is still breathing through some open wound. Now everyone apparently rows together, but a bad result next Sunday could cause another internal implosion in a party where the knives are always buried. You never know how deep until you use them: it could be a few meters or just a few centimeters.
Susana Díaz has taken advantage of this event not only to ask for a vote for Montero’s candidacy, but above all to vindicate herself. With Díaz at the helm, the Andalusian PSOE lost the elections in 2018 with a hypotensive campaign in which what the candidate talked about most was her state of mind: “I’m happy.”
“We relaxed and were not united enough. We have to learn so as not to make the same mistakes,” acknowledged the current senator for the autonomous community. That is one of the circumstances to which he has attributed the loss of the Board; The other was due to the PP’s pact with Vox for Moreno’s investiture. “The socialists won,” he stressed.
There was excitement at seeing Díaz and the general secretary of the PSOE of Seville, Javier Fernández de los Ríos, together, internal rivals in many episodes of the PSOE. To Antonio Muñoz, former mayor of Seville and municipal spokesperson for the opposition, and to Verónica Pérez, candidate number five on the Seville list and former provincial secretary. The Sevillian PSOE is fighting to maintain that fifth seat, and reaching sixth is not even considered. In the regional elections of 2022, the PP surpassed the socialists in this constituency for the first time in history, although later the PSOE won in the municipal elections and in the general elections of 2023.
Díaz has boasted of the measures she implemented as president of the Board between 2015 and 2018. Half of that term was dedicated to the socialist fighting for control of the PSOE and when she returned from the excursion, without achieving the objective, she encountered massive demonstrations over the public health situation. The former president launched a successful measure, which her successor has maintained, such as the almost 100% bonus on university tuition. “We were pioneers”, an expression widely used by the socialist rulers who now copy those of the PP. She has highlighted other decisions to highlight the mark that she left on the Board, while the PP “has not done anything in these years”, despite having much more budget than she had.
There is no one like Susana Díaz to tell certain details. For example, she has said that she was the one who insisted that children with hearing problems have two cochlear implants instead of one. “There is no money, they already have one and I told them: ‘But if we put two in, they will hear better.’ Another example. When he defended the patches flag for diabetic children. “There is no money, they said. ‘And that child with the little fingers doesn’t give you anything Moraites?” she says she said.
There have also been some intruders in the little square where from time to time he interrupted with a “long live Franco!”. And people who seemed to be booing the speakers, but who were actually celebrating Sevilla FC’s victory in Villareal.
Díaz has also raised his head as to why, when he left the Government, he did so without “a single stain, not a single blemish”, without mentioning the condemnation of senior socialist officials, including two former presidents of the Board, for the case of the ERE, later rectified by the Constitutional Court.
Javier Fernández de los Ríos has not left the joint act with the former president unvalued and, incidentally, has left an internal message: “This is an act of unity, of cohesion. We are the heart of the Andalusian PSOE, without the PSOE of Seville nothing and no one can move in the PSOE of Andalusia.”
