This is how Santos Cerdán became strong in the PSOE

MadridWith the fall of Santos Cerdán, Pedro Sánchez is left not only without an organizational secretary in the PSOE but also without one of his increasingly small inner circle of trusted figures. The Spanish Prime Minister He confesses to being deeply affected Not only because of the scandal's political impact, but also because of the personal pain of being deceived by the person who's been his right-hand man for years, whom he says he didn't suspect a thing about until the day the UCO report was published. Cerdán was in charge of keeping the party in order on behalf of Sánchez and handled some of the most sensitive matters of the legislature, such as the dialogue with Junts. How did he rise to that position of power?

A source consulted by ARA, who knows him from his time in Navarra, places as one of the determining factors the fact that he wholeheartedly backed the horse that, against all odds, emerged victorious in both the 2014 PSOE primaries and those of 2007. The leader of the Socialist Party of Navarra (PSN), he opted for Sánchez in the fight against Eduardo Madina when the majority of Navarrese socialists—including its current leader, María Chivite—were in favor of Sánchez's opponent. "He went against the grain" of the federation, the same sources recall, emphasizing that with the victory of the current socialist general secretary, he gained power in the PSN for having identified himself as a Sanchista and came to have an "absolute" influence over the Navarrese federation, which remained even when he took the step, years later, to the federation.

The Peugeot team

To explain the leap to the core closest to the PSOE leader, we must go back to 2016, when Sánchez, repudiated by the majority of his party, surrounded himself with a few loyal followers and traveled across Spain in a Peugeot 407 to regain the Socialist general secretary position after being forced to resign two years and three months after the victory. Cerdán was one of the militants who accompanied him in this feat, with which he regained the leadership of the PSOE in 2017, prevailing in the battle against Andalusian Susana Díaz. It was from that moment on that Cerdán joined Sánchez's trusted team at Ferraz and became secretary of territorial coordination of the PSOE. A position that entailed acting as the right-hand man to the state organization secretary, a responsibility that fell to José Luis Ábalos, who at the time was the Socialists' general secretary in the province of Valencia.

Why did he place Sánchez in this position of organic power within the party? The secretary general rewarded with important positions the people who most supported him when the figures were bad and, adds a source from the PSOE who lived through that moment, in the case of Ábalos and Cerdán, it is added that of that group of loyalists, they were the only two with organic positions of territorial power in their respective federations.

The replacement of Ábalos

In 2021, with Ábalos's dismissal, Cerdán took his place and became the party's number three. Another relevant moment to explain his growing influence over Sánchez is the departure of Adriana Lastra, who was the PSOE's number two until 2022. The former deputy secretary general, also a staunch supporter of the Peugeot era, stated, after the alleged plot was uncovered, that Cerdán "subjected her to relentless harassment" until she resigned. A source within the Socialist leadership attributes Cerdán's animosity toward her to the fact that Lastra had warned him about Ábalos's problematic behavior with women, and with that accusation, she had indirectly endangered him. the corrupt plot, of which Lastra has assured that he had no clueBeyond this episode, sources familiar with Cerdán point to his "discreet and loyal" nature, as well as his success in managing key portfolios, as reasons for his rise to the position of right-hand man to the Spanish Prime Minister.

The key man in the negotiations

His Navarrese origins positioned him as a key figure in unblocking one of the obstacles facing Sánchez's terms of office: the support of the pro-independence movement. Since the previous term, which began thanks to the abstention of EH Bildu in the Socialist party's investiture, Cerdán has been the trusted interlocutor of the Aberzales (Spanish Nationalist Party). One of the sources consulted places him as one of the main proponents of the commitment to breaking the cordon sanitaire (health cordon) imposed on EH Bildu, which has become one of Sánchez's most reliable parliamentary partners. The success of this strategy—also replicated in Navarre with Cerdán as negotiator—gained him political clout. Also influential has been the fact that he has been the PSOE's interlocutor with Carles Puigdemont until now and that he was one of the architects of the amnesty law that allowed this term to get underway. Voices from the PSOE now criticize her for the fact that it is precisely the "double life" she has been leading all this time that is causing her to falter.