• Sánchez team airs new left-wing theme for upcoming PSOE party conference
• Socialists under Sánchez to claim leadership of Spanish Left against Rajoy gov’t
The leadership team around newly re-elected Socialist party (PSOE) secretary-general Pedro Sánchez has unveiled the theme of the upcoming 39th party conference set to kick-off on Saturday 17th June, selecting Somos la izquierda (‘We are the Left’) as the theme, a clear signal that Spain’s Socialists intend to present a head-on challenge to the Unidos Podemos (United We Can) coalition led by rival party Podemos (We Can) for the hegemony of the Spanish political left.
In choosing the theme, the Sánchez team rejected the milder and more centrist El futuro empieza hoy (‘The Future Begins Today’), which had been prepared by the interim caretaker committee that supplanted Sánchez following the internal party leadership coup that ousted him from power last October.
That campaign messaging appears to have paid off already, with a new poll released at the weekend showing an apparent rebound by the Socialists to a potential 22.8 percent of the vote in a general election from the 20.2 percent registered in April, while Unidos Podemos’ share of the potential vote during the same period has fallen from 20.7 percent in April to 19.2 percent.
► ► CLICK ABOVE TO WATCH PSOE ‘SOMOS LA IZQUIERDA’ VIDEO ► ►
Throughout the campaign for his return to the PSOE’s top leadership position, which culminated in Sánchez’s re-election on 21st May by a vote of 50.2 percent versus the 39.9 percent garnered by rival Susana Díaz, the regional Socialist party leader and President of Andalucia, Sánchez had stressed the party’s historic Socialist roots and shaped his messaging to appeal to the PSOE’s more left-leaning rank and file membership.
In unveiling the theme for the conference, the Sánchez team released a brief Somos la izquierda video showing the direction in which he intends to steer the PSOE going forward under his leadership. The video hones in on six years of political corruption, economic hardship, austerity budgets and lack of social justice under the conservative governing Partido Popular (PP) of President Mariano Rajoy, then offers in contrast a future vision of the PSOE under Sánchez as united, open-minded, ideologically consistent, credible and the only real alternative to the PP government coming from the left of Spain’s political spectrum.
► Read More in Spanish at El Mundo, El Periódico and Público …
