Juan Lobato resigned this Wednesday as leader of the Madrid PSOE 24 hours after saying that he would not do so. In a letter, Lobato has assured that he is leaving after this Monday he acknowledged that he registered before a notary a conversation with Pilar Sánchez Acera, Chief of Staff of Minister Óscar López, about the alleged leak of the email that Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner sent to the Prosecutor’s Office recognizing his double tax fraud.
“I have made the decision not to continue as general secretary of the PSOE of Madrid,” said Lobato in a letter that he sent to the militancy and the press early this Wednesday afternoon. “I do it to put a stop to a situation of confrontation and serious division that was being generated in the party, which was only going to damage the PSOE in Madrid and the progress in unity that we had achieved in these three years. My goal has always been to build an ambitious project with enthusiasm for Madrid, and this must continue to be the case in the future,” he stated.
In the letter, which arrives just 24 hours after the appearance in which he implied that he was continuing, Lobato has also criticized his own party. “Without a doubt my way of doing politics is not the same nor perhaps sometimes compatible with that of a majority of the current leadership of my party. No problem. I assume it democratically. But I cannot give up being who I am and how I have always been,” he said.
“I have always made it clear that the politics in which I believe has as its essence dialogue and debate, public service, honesty and the general interest. I believe in politics in which people with different positions can agree on things that benefit citizens. Because the common good has to be above any political position. “I do not believe in the destruction of the adversary, in the annihilation of those who disagree and those who think differently,” he added, to conclude: “For me, politics is something else.”
“And loyalty to my party is to work to implement its principles, what it has represented for more than 145 years: equality, freedom, democracy, education and public health, the defense of the most vulnerable, the non leave no one behind,” he added.
“None of us are essential. It is much more important at all times to protect and promote good politics than for those of us who exercise it circumstantially,” he said, in addition to betting. I think we must decisively bet on politics “with capital letters.” In his opinion, it is the strategy that he has practiced in recent months, as leader of the PSOE in Madrid. “The one who listens, the one who argues, the one who does not insult or annihilate one’s own or the person opposite, but rather tries to convince them and look for common ground. “I don’t consider any other way of doing politics.”
The judicial horizon
In principle, Lobato will continue as a socialist militant. “My commitment to the PSOE continues and will continue to be there. Today I take a step towards leadership. But you have my commitment that at each appropriate future stage I will assume my responsibility as a militant to help the party continue working to improve people’s lives. As always, together with the thousands of women and men who share militancy and the millions of citizens who do not resign themselves to being just spectators in this society.”
The former leader of the Madrid socialists has been called to testify as a witness this Friday before the Supreme Court judge who is investigating the attorney general for the alleged leak of emails from Alberto González Amador’s lawyer, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, reports Alberto Pozas. According to the ABC newspaper, Lobato went to a notary office at the beginning of November to record some messages that he had exchanged months ago, in March 2024, with Pilar Sánchez Acera, then in Moncloa under the orders of Óscar López. Some messages in which, according to Lobato’s version, Sánchez Acera had urged him to disseminate those emails in the Madrid Assembly before Ayuso herself.
Lobato has insisted on several occasions that he did it to be able to demonstrate that neither the PSOE nor Moncloa ever obtained those emails before they were published by the media that same morning.
Source: www.eldiario.es
