All and despite everything, the PSOE retains an advantage in the 29N campaign despite the crisis it is going through with its credibility, management capacity, and serious errors. What the PSOE of Sánchez has not lost is its ability to introduce the next turn and force its adversaries to review their positions. My reading of the resignation of Óscar Puente and of the assignment of Transportes to Carlos Cuerpo is that the socialists have found an opportunity and again take advantage of adverse circumstances to recover the initiative when they seemed condemned to defend themselves. I do not get into assessing the moral framework of taking advantage of a context of tragedy and personal losses. Nor am I talking about electoral advantage, but about narrative strategy.
Puente has announced his departure from the Government and his renunciation of running for the election in a surprising way, without anyone expecting it in the purest Sánchez style, that is, catching both insiders and outsiders off guard with their foot changed. The next day, Sánchez has assigned Transportes on a temporary basis to the first vice president and Minister of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo. This sequence of decisions has immediate communication consequences. The Government again has a decision of its own around which to organize its message, demonstrating control down to the millimeter of game theory.
What the PSOE of Sánchez has not lost is its ability to introduce the next turn and force its adversaries to review their positions
In political communication, whoever manages to get others to respond to their moves sets the agenda of the campaign and also the narrative, even if the matter being discussed ends up being harmful to them. The PSOE has not chosen the rail crisis, but it has intervened in the way of steering its political outcome. A crisis turned into an opportunity, one of the best strategic actions that can be used in a political career. With the resignation and the replacement, it introduces new facts that compete with the accumulated wear and force the updating of arguments.
The Government again has a decision of its own around which to organize its message
With the resignation, the opposition is left without the argument it was brandishing as almost the only issue of wear and tear against the PSOE. While Puente remained in office, demanding his exit allowed the accusation that the Government was avoiding responsibilities to be condensed into a single sentence. Once he leaves, that demand loses its meaning, so the new demand points again to Sánchez, who has not stopped being singled out. But, the strategy we have read in Sánchez’s appearance is that he has started incorporating the resignation into a narrative of responsibility and differentiating the conduct of the Executive from that of his adversaries. It is a move that also targets the Socialist electorate, uncomfortable some defending the continuity of the minister.
The choice of Carlos Cuerpo adds another resource, the provision of credentials with which to support a message of solvency and less linkage to the wear and tear of this crisis. In campaign terms, Sánchez turns to a player who arrives untainted to be heard. The President has highlighted in a very deliberate way his capacity for management and his demeanor, leaving implicit the contrast with Puente’s style, with an edge that is confrontational, useful for mobilizing their own and responding to the opposition, but difficult to sustain when explanations are sought and the crisis goes beyond the critical and ironic tone of social media. Cuerpo allows a shift to a more restrained tone, supported by his technical profile.
My view is that the PSOE thus has a new narrative advantage, as it did with the overnight camp-out in reaction to Maricarmen’s eviction, an episode of high social sensitivity. If the opposition devotes all its energy to challenging Sánchez, it reduces the space to present its own proposal that organizes the campaign around its priorities.