The worst moment to lead the socialists

PalmaA PSIB in flames. This is the party preparing for the 2027 elections with Rosario Sánchez as the new candidate. Francina Armengol's electoral succession can be read in a friendly way, as renewal and generational change. The usual narrative when a party tries to turn an obligatory change into a strategic decision.

But there is another, less comfortable reading. Sánchez will take over the leadership of an organization that has not yet digested the defeat of 2023, that has not undergone internal catharsis, and in a state context that weighs like a slab.

The ripple effect of Pedro Sánchez's PSOE has already been felt in the elections of communities like Castile and León and Andalusia. And there are not many elements to suggest that the Balearic Islands will be an exception. Even more so with Marga Prohens having consolidated her position after three years in government, even though the structural problems of the Islands – housing,. over-tourism, pressure on all aspects of daily life – remain intact.

Here arises the fundamental dilemma for PSIB. Leaders must be forged in victory and defeat, but not all defeats are equal, nor are all stages equally easy to face. The question is whether Rosario Sánchez will gain prominence after taking over the leadership in the elections or if she is entering the scene too soon to complete her political journey.

However, the situation is not only a credit to the Secretary of State for Tourism, but also a discredit to other PSIB leaders. None has represented a clear alternative to Armengol. The former President of the Government is the one who has appointed her successor at the head of the regional list, because, as Anna Mascaró explains on the previous page, Armengol will continue to control the party. A debatable position, because it is not the same to steer a party from Madrid's institutions as it is to do so from a strictly Balearic perspective, with all the conditioning factors.

The socialists have had to put someone in charge who will assume responsibility for a defeat before it happens, and Rosario Sánchez's leadership could be burnt out prematurely. Who will be left then? Iago Negueruela has gone from a political promise to being relegated to the Palma City Council and, what's more, with the discontent of part of the party. Amanda Fernández will be Catalina Cladera's successor on the Council, and historical figures, such as Mercedes Garrido, Pilar Costa, and Cosme Bonet, are not exactly a paradigm of political renewal.

Socialists will have to be careful. Forming leaders takes a lot of time, but it is possible to burn them out in just one election campaign. And one must not forget the left's habit of looking for new faces when there are problems, as if it were an aesthetic issue and not a fundamental one. Without a process of deep reflection, it doesn't matter who presents themselves at the head of the PSIB, because the credibility problems of parties are not fixed by people.

In fact, the PP should have dropped Alberto Núñez Feijóo a long time ago if it followed this logic. The right is also conservative in keeping leaders who don't work and who, if they govern, it's because others have lost and not because they have won.

Armengol has said she is stepping aside out of responsibility. But this statement can backfire on her, because she could also have assumed the end of the PSIB's cycle out of responsibility, so as not to throw her party colleague into the fire. She could have made this decision earlier out of responsibility, to give Rosario Sánchez a much more reasonable timeframe. Normally, when politicians do things out of responsibility, they are actually doing them out of political pragmatism.