Pedro Sanchez, who had fought to retain the leadership of the PSOE since a coup against him erupted this week, stepped down after a long and bitter meeting of the party’s federal executive committee on Saturday. So Sánchez, with the support of the other half of the PSOE, has been barricading himself – quite literally, until this week − inside the party’s headquarters in Madrid. “That is how I say goodbye, sure of the fact that it has been an honour to be secretary general of the Socialist Party.”

Pressure had started to build on Mr Sánchez following disappointing results in December and June’s inconclusive general elections. Sánchez responded to complaints about the weekend’s performance and his leadership by calling a snap leadership election for later this month, hoping his enemies in the party would not have time to prepare a rival candidacy. A few hours earlier, 17 members of the socialist executive had resigned in a bid to unseat the leader, and as Sánchez and another 17 loyalists stood firm, an all-out, very public, war had been unleashed in the heart of the party. Hopes for an end to Spain’s nine-month political deadlock have risen after the shattered Socialist Workers’ party deposed its leader over his pointblank refusal to allow the acting prime minister to form a government. However, the most immediate challenge for Sánchez, the man many blame for Spain’s unprecedented political impasse, is to survive an emergency meeting of the party’s federal committee today.
The leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, Pedro Sánchez, resigns.