PSOE: the end of the party-as-state is a momentous development

The PSOE is coming to an end. It is virtually dead, pending only the final nail in the coffin. It is true: we don’t know how this shambolic episode in which we are all embroiled (equal parts politics and media circus, with a touch of thug-like shenanigans) will unfold. But I don’t think anyone can imagine, not even in good faith, that the PSOE will somehow overcome this crisis and everything will miraculously be as it was before. Are we agreed? Then prepare for life without the PSOE.

For those of us who lived through the Franco dictatorship and the transition to democracy, those of us who were there, the very idea of a post-PSOE scenario makes our heads spin. Nothing will ever be the same again. Over the next few months, we will see the emergence of a new political map; we will have a diminished PSOE turned into a minor party and conserving only its historical acronym, and in all probability, a new party (with a new acronym and a new brand) that will challenge the PSOE for its share of the political arena. Or two parties. Or even three. All of this with the consent of Podemos, Izquierda Unida, and who knows how many others on the left who will be vying for the orphaned and disconcerted votes from the old socialist franchise. The disappearance of the PSOE—the disappearance of the PSOE we have known until now—will bring about the complete, top-to-bottom reconfiguration of the Spanish left, and the redrawing of the entire political map of Spain. Make no mistake: it will be one of the most significant political developments we’ve ever seen.

But this historic shift has another aspect that strikes me as particularly relevant: the disappearance of the PSOE is the disappearance of the party that created Spain. It is the disappearance of the party that made the Spanish transition possible. Of the party-as-state. And that is why this disappearance will inevitably lead to the demise of a particular model of the Spanish state.

I don’t know if anyone on the left will be able to come up with another model. But for now, the model of Spain that a powerful PSOE was able to build in the eighties, which inspired so many, is going down the tubes along with the party. Among other reasons, because it is being willed down the drain by the revolting methods and attitudes of the very people that created the it—Mr. X being at the forefront of it all.

In the meantime, while we wait to see whether anyone on the left is able to envision this new concept of Spain, the monopoly over the narrative regarding what is the neighbouring nation—Catalonia, that is—remains firmly in the hands of the PP. In its entirety. And this narrative, as we are reminded every day, is limited to an updating of sorts of the sociological aspects of Francoism. And it is impossible to digest if you are not strictly in the PP’s camp.

The ultimate failure of the PSOE’s political project is therefore a momentous development. It is also a sign that the tide is changing in the struggle for Catalan independence. While yesterday in Barcelona the separatist majority showed its vitality in the regional parliament, refuting the rumours and speculation of recent months, the regime in Madrid has visibly begun to implode. With the PP’s bellicose strategy raising serious doubts in the courts they themselves have shaped, with a stultified and bewildered parliament, about to vote for what citizens refused to support at the polls, with the PSOE bleeding to death to the beat of the fluctuations within the IBEX, with public bodies behaving as if we were back in the fifties, and with the European Union looking on with contempt and removing Spanish politicians from any position of responsibility.