In the times when, according to the summary of the Leire Díez case, Santos Cerdán involved the PSOE in a dirty war against the judicial system, the Secretary of Organization of the main government party between the summers of 2021 and 2025 had a lot of power in Ferraz, among other things because he had already been exercising that de facto function for four years when the head was José Luis Ábalos, who spent most of his time dedicated to the Ministry of Transport. In that period, according to the president of Asturias, Adrián Barbón, he intervened to compromise the stability of the PSOE in the Principality, one of the four communities currently presided over by the socialists. The Asturian president frames these actions in Cerdán’s confrontation with Adriana Lastra.
Barbón assured this Thursday that Cerdán had “destabilizing behavior” against the Asturian Socialist Federation (FSA). The decision of the PSOE baron, in the government since 2019, to integrate the former deputy secretary general of the party and former spokesperson in Congress into the regional executive after his departure from Ferraz in 2022 after suffering “an all-out war” with Cerdán, further strained the relationship. In fact, the regional president denounced in August 2024 “a clear attempt to destabilize the party and the Government in Asturias.”
The origin was the appearance out of nowhere of a critical group without a name or surname that claimed to have the support of Ferraz and defended in the Asturian press the removal of Barbón from the leadership of the Asturian PSOE, although leaving him as president of the regional government. This movement even proposed a kind of internal motion of censure in the FSA for which they claimed to have hundreds of support from party members. The questioning of this movement, which was as critical as it was unknown to Barbón, was nipped in the bud with a statement from Ferraz: “Given the information that appeared in the media that links certain organic minority movements with Ferraz or the Federal Executive Commission of the PSOE, the Federal Executive Commission wants to make clear its overwhelming support for Adrián Barbón as general secretary of the Socialist Federation of Asturias, in addition to highlighting his excellent work as president of the Principality of Asturias and the achievements of his government,” the statement stated. Sources from the FSA management categorically defend that Sánchez “was never in those movements” against Barbón,
“From what we know, Mr. Cerdán did not think it was too good [el regreso de Lastra a la FSA]”, stated this Thursday the president of Asturias, who has stressed that Cerdán’s campaign against Lastra led her to resign as number two of the PSOE in a very delicate personal moment: “With a risky pregnancy, she ended up resigning and distancing herself from Ferraz.” Her replacement was María Jesús Montero, who combines the position with that of general secretary of the Andalusian PSOE.
She then justified in a statement that her resignation as deputy secretary general was due to the changes that had occurred in her personal life that required “tranquility and rest”, which is why she had been on sick leave. Lastra was about to lose the baby, according to sources at the time from the federal leadership of the PSOE.
A year ago to Koldo García, Ábalos’ former trusted advisor, they not only revealed the allegedly corrupt activities of both of them and Cerdán, but also details about the internal wars within the party and, specifically, the confrontation between the three of them and Lastra, especially since the former deputy general secretary of the PSOE left the spokesperson for the socialist group in Congress, in September 2021, and dedicated herself exclusively to work at the socialist headquarters of Ferraz. That interest in the day-to-day organic life of the party made her a very dangerous potential witness for the alleged corrupt plot. This is confirmed by a conversation that García and Cerdán had on February 2, 2022 and that was incorporated into the Supreme Court case in which they are being investigated.
García warned Cerdán, after ensuring that Asturian politics had previously been the “biggest enemy” of the former minister, who is waiting to hear the sentence of the case masks. On July 18, 2022, just five months after the conversation recorded in the recording, Lastra resigned as of the of the PSOE. Maritcha is Maritcha Ruiz, communication director of the PSOE between 2015 and August 2022: like Lastra, she was one of Sánchez’s unconditional supporters and left her position weeks after the former deputy secretary general.
Barbón’s denunciation of Cerdán and the attempts to weaken his leadership have precedents in other territories. Luis Tudanca, former secretary general of the PSOE of Castilla y León and current senator, accused the “environment” of the former number three of the party of “destabilizing” his federation in which he recalled his support for Pedro Sánchez “when almost no one believed in him.” “For a year, names, leaks, candidates have been thrown around the Organization Secretariat, generating noise and destabilizing the federation (…) I have the feeling that while we dedicated ourselves to working and fighting for Castilla y León against the first Government with the extreme right that this country has had in an autonomy, others were dedicated to destabilizing,” then denounced the socialist leader, who a few months later decided not to run for re-election after maintaining a fight very tough with Cerdán due to the primary calendar and left the way clear for the consensus candidacy of Carlos Martínez.
