If a comparison were established between politics and music festivals, it could be said that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will be the headliner of the first session of the PSOE municipal conference that begins this Saturday in Valencia. The former Prime Minister will be in charge of inaugurating the act with which the party will officially start the pre-campaign for the local and regional elections on May 28.
It is not the first time that the person who was in charge of La Moncloa between 2004 and 2012 publicly supports Pedro Sánchez, with whom he has not always had precisely the harmony that he does exhibit now. In recent months, the former president has intervened in the congress in which his successor assumed the leadership of the Socialist International and has played a leading role in the commemorative celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the first victory of Felipe González, in addition to having turned in elections to the Junta de Castilla y León in February of last year.
"President Zapatero is an asset of the PSOE of maximum relevance, national and international," they emphasize in the Federal Executive. For this reason, Ferraz has decided to leave him the focus of the opening of a conference that the current president will close this Sunday in which the model of the city of the future that the party is committed to will be discussed and the electoral program will be presented. framework with which the party's mayoral candidates will attend the next appointment with the polls.
The relationship between Sánchez and his now ally became tense in the fall of 2014. The then recently elected party leader reneged on the reform of article 135 of the Constitution promoted in 2011 by his predecessor - which established that the payment of the public debt was priority over any other State expense- going so far as to describe it as an "error", although he himself had voted in favor of it when he was a deputy.
Despite the fact that Zapatero tried to be discreet in public, a group of like-minded people led by former minister Miguel Sebastián took it upon themselves to show the discomfort that this attempt to disavow caused him. Subsequently, the former president secretly dined with Pablo Iglesias, when Podemos threatened to overwhelm the PSOE, which the party's general secretary found out from a journalist and interpreted as a betrayal, which ended up blowing up the bridges between the two.
At the gates of the 2015 general elections, both politicians staged a cold and forced reconciliation at the presentation of a book in Madrid, but with which they put a public end to a harsh confrontation that had lasted for months. Since then, the rapprochement between the two has been gradual to the point that the former president has become one of the main defenders of Sánchez's management at the head of the first coalition government in the history of Spain.
Zapatero described as "brave" and "correct" the 180-degree turn with respect to Spain's traditional position regarding Western Sahara after going on to support its being an autonomous province of Morocco. Until then all the executives, including the one he chaired, had advocated for the right of the Saharawi population to determine their future through a negotiated solution.
He has also defended the pacts both with Unidas Podemos in La Moncloa and with ERC and Bildu to complete the required majority in Congress in the face of harsh criticism from some party barons headed by Emiliano García-Page (Castilla-La Mancha) and Javier Lambán (Aragon). The former president has argued on several occasions that the "dialogue policy" has allowed the disinflammation of the independence conflict in Catalonia, that "the country works" and that the laws that have been approved have been "progressive", including the only yes It is yes, that, despite the controversy over the reductions in sentences of more than 900 rapists and aggressors that its application has allowed, it considers that "it will be remembered for the defense of women's freedom."
In his public speech at the Socialist International Congress held in Madrid in November last year, Zapatero concluded his alignment with Sánchez by stating that he feels "very proud" of his government. Specifically, he stressed that the Democratic Memory Law will be what will reward him the most "in the future and over time", a rule that, on the other hand, has generated controversy among party historians such as Felipe González himself, who will not be there this weekend in Valencia.
Among the 2,000 confirmed attendees there is the mayoress of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who will speak this Saturday afternoon in the Women and local power talk, moderated by the Minister of Territorial Policy and government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, and in which they will participate also the president of the association of Portuguese municipalities, Luisa Salgueiro, and the councilors of La Coruña, Inés Rey, and of the Sevillian town of Osuna, Rosario Andújar. Sánchez will close the municipal convention on Sunday together with the president of the Valencian Community, Ximo Puig, and the deputy mayor of Valencia, Sandra Gómez.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
