Some people are discovering what the PSOE is more than a century late

"The goat always goes to the mountain," says a famous Spanish proverb, referring to tendencies that time cannot erase.

Sánchez vindicates the founder of the PSOE, who encouraged a coup and supported a dictatorship
The antidemocratic attitude of historical socialists whom the PSOE still claims

In Spanish politics, the easiest goat to identify bears the initials of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), an organization founded in 1879 and whose name has been associated for four decades with numerous corruption scandals, a serious case of state terrorism (the GAL) and a desire to colonize institutions that makes many consider it a placement agency.

Today, the latest scandal involving that party (for now) has come to light, in the form of an audio recording of an alleged operation against the Civil Guard for investigating PSOE corruption scandals. This news has caused outrage, even among those who insist on making all kinds of deals with that party. It's as if they've suddenly learned what the PSOE is.

Let us remember that a year ago, Sánchez vindicated the founder of the PSOE, an extremist who encouraged coups and terrorism. That extremist, Pablo Iglesias Posse, instigated an attack against a right-wing deputy on July 7, 1910, from the rostrum of Parliament, and a few weeks later that deputy was shot while traveling on a train. Today, in all the headquarters of the PSOE there are portraits of Pablo Iglesias Posse as if he were an example to follow.

Another president of that party, Francisco Largo Caballero, supported violence and defended a dictatorship during the Second Republic, and even threatened a civil war if the right-wing won the elections: "If the right-wing triumphs, our work will have to be twofold, because with our allies we will be able to work within the law, and if the right-wing wins we will have to go to a declared civil war." Four years ago, Sánchez called for people to imitate that fanatic in a speech at a public event of the UGT, the PSOE union.

During the Second Republic, the PSOE had a deputy, Margarita Nelken, who incited the murder of women for being Catholic and monarchists. During the Civil War, according to the testimony of the anarchist Juan García Oliver, Minister of Justice on the Republican side, Nelken became a communist and led "execution groups" against political rivals, during the famous era of the "chekas" created by left-wing parties in Spain. Today, Nelken has streets named after her in Madrid and other Spanish cities, as a sign of the reverence the PSOE continues to feel for her.

Of course, there have been decent people in the PSOE, such as the anti-communist Julián Besteiro or Nicolás Redondo Terreros, but they have always been the exception, not the rule. In fact, Redondo was expelled two years ago after criticizing Sánchez's pacts with separatists and communists. The PSOE as an organization has always fostered miserable behavior among its top officials. The fact that its current general secretary is an unscrupulous man like Pedro Sánchez is very revealing about the kind of behavior that this party has been fostering within its ranks.

Today, some people are discovering what the PSOE is more than a century late, as if they had ignored everything that the history books have been pointing out about that party, with which only Vox has refused to formalize any kind of pact, something that some seemed to take as a gesture of radicalism from those who refused to go along with an organization as toxic as the one Sánchez leads. Now the PP should be asking themselves why they didn't do the same.