The former socialist president of Extremadura Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra maintains that the PSOE today is “a party without substance, without weight, puny and shrunken,” and contrasts it with the PSOE of the 1980s, which, in his view, was an organization “plump, open, and where a large part of society found a place to sit.”
These reflections appear in the book that he has presented this week in Madrid, titled 'Sacando Pecho' (Almuzara publishing house), where he gathers his political memoirs and reviews his term at the head of the Junta of Extremadura over 24 years, as well as addressing the current situation of Spain and of his party, in which he continues to be a member despite his criticisms of the line of the current president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
After the last four regional appointments, Rodríguez Ibarra reiterates the need for “a debate” about the future of the PSOE. He nevertheless emphasizes that his approach to “facilitate a new rebirth” of the party “is not against Sánchez, but against his policy.”
“There are two ways to be in politics: training to collaborate or training for confrontation. The current socialist leaders chose the second option,” says the former ruler from Extremadura.
The PSOE must assume mistakes and help to “recover the country”
In this context, Ibarra argues that the PSOE “should do everything possible to help recover the country,” although, as he indicates, it must move away from the “erroneous” maxim of “even if it is at the expense of the party’s interests.”
“If the PSOE, here and now, contributes in a real and effective way to getting Spain out of the mess it is stuck in, it will, without any question, strengthen its role and mitigate the bad image that representative democracy has in Spain,” he adds.
He also considers that the current socialist leadership should “leave to Sumar and Podemos the role of demagoguery and the movement of the viscera.” To do so, he understands that the PSOE “has the obligation” to admit that in recent stages it “made some mistakes,” among which he cites the Amnesty Law, the special financing for Catalonia, or support for the law of “only yes is yes,” and to make clear that “it is not willing to keep making them.”
Bipartisanship, professional experience, and constitutional reform
In another passage from the work, Rodríguez Ibarra clarifies that he is not in favor of setting time limits on terms, but he does propose that no one should be elected to an institutional position without having previously demonstrated a work history outside of politics.
"If no minimum of five years has been paid into Social Security, nobody should aspire to an institutional position. Whoever aspires to devote part of their life to professional politics must show that they have known how to earn a living outside of politics," he explains.
Likewise, he argues that bipartisanship "has turned out to be more beneficial for the interests of Spaniards and for democratic control than the multiparty system prevailing at this moment".
Finally, he asserts the full validity of the 1978 Constitution, although he admits that "every process needs revisions to replace or change the materials that have expired due to fatigue." In this sense, he proposes two specific changes: transforming the Senate into an "authentic chamber for territorial representation" and incorporating a new chapter dedicated to virtual society.