Sauna surprise: even a lowly official from Badajoz rebels against the general

Rafael Lemus, provincial secretary of the PSOE in Badajoz for 13 years, has been left off the Senate lists for 29 November after Ferraz, the party's national headquarters, sidelined him to make room for José Luis Quintana. Lemus has criticised the regional leadership for failing to inform him personally of his removal.

On 14 October, the Provincial Committee of the PSOE in Badajoz, a 250-member body, chose Yolanda García Seco and Rafael Lemus as lead candidates for the Congress and the Senate respectively. Two weeks later, Lemus is on neither list. The sequence of his removal has two steps: first he was pushed out of the top Senate spot by Ferraz to make way for José Luis Quintana, the Government Delegate and a friend of Pedro Sánchez; then he was moved down to number 3 by the national pact between the Socialists and the so-called Frente Amplio, which ultimately left him off the list altogether.

## Thirteen years at the helm of the party in Badajoz

Lemus led the Provincial Secretariat of the PSOE in Badajoz from 28 April 2012 until May 2025. Before that, he had been deputy secretary general from 2008 to 2012, during Francisco Fuentes Gallardo's tenure at the head of the organisation. He was a senator in the legislature that has just ended. His removal from the lists is not an isolated case of party renewal: it is the loss of a position he held as a matter of course in the provincial structure.

## The Sun Tzu quote and the rebuke to the regional leadership

Lemus has published a message including a quote attributed to Sun Tzu, the Chinese strategist and military commander: "When the general is weak and without authority, when his orders are not clear and distinct, when there are no fixed duties assigned to officers and men, the result is utter disorder." The quote points, without naming him, at the secretary general of the PSOE in Extremadura, for accepting the impositions from Ferraz. The Extremaduran leader has thanked Joaquín Macías, of IU (United Left), who will take his place on the Senate list and who called him personally to tell him so. No leader from his own party did. "A gesture that does him credit and that the regional leadership of my party did not have to announce my removal," he wrote. He also wished all the candidates good luck.

## A seat that changes hands without a phone call

Lemus's replacement on the Senate list will be Joaquín Macías, of IU, under the agreement between the PSOE and the Frente Amplio. The episode paints an unusual picture: a leader with thirteen years in provincial command learns of his removal through the phone call of another party's representative. The regional leadership has given no public explanation as to why it was not the one to communicate the decision.