Susana Díaz

In the aftermath of 2014 European Parliament election in Spain, PSOE's national leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba resigned and a leadership contest was held. Díaz, who still had not won any major election, did not run,[10] but a coalition of regional leaders including herself, opposed the candidacy of early front-runner Eduardo Madina, who was seen as Rubalcaba's heir, and supported a change in the party's policies. These regional leaders backed Economics Ph.D. Pedro Sánchez to become the party's new leader, what eventually happened, with Sánchez winning a majority of the party member's vote. As a setoff, critical regional leaders entered PSOE's executive committee.[11]

Following a disagreement with the United Left, she called for early elections, which were held in 2015.

During the 2015 Andalusian parliamentary election, Díaz led a forceful campaign against Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, opposing the austerity policies enacted by his central government. Díaz also insisted that the Socialists would not form an alliance with the PP or Podemos if the vote failed to produce an outright winner.[12]

In the election, Díaz's party retained the same number of seats as prior to the election – 47 – although the election was still considered a victory for the PSOE as it regained its previous status as the largest party in the Andalusian Parliament. This was because the main opposition PP lost 17 seats and Díaz's former coalition partner, United Left, lost 7 seats. Two new parties, the left-wing Podemos and the centre-right Citizens, won 15 and 9 seats respectively. After a long period of three-way negotiations with the two new parties, Diaz came to an agreement with Citizens, and in early May 2015 she was subsequently re-elected as regional President.

General elections were held in Spain in December 2015. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's [People's Party (Spain|PP) won the most seats, but refused to form a government as a majority of the Congress of Deputies were hostile to him.[13] King Felipe VI then invited the runner-up PSOE's leader Pedro Sánchez to form a government;[14] however, Díaz and her coalition of regional leaders barred Sánchez from forming a government with the third-place left-wing populist, anti-austerity Podemos[15] thus forcing him to make a deal with the fourth-place, liberal-conservative Citizens.[16] However, this arrangement would not achieve parliamentary majority, and repeat general elections were held six months later in 2016 while Rajoy remained prime minister in a caretaker capacity. Díaz warned Sánchez that the party would not tolerate another electoral loss.[17]

In the repeat elections, the PSOE maintained second place and lost five seats, while Rajoy's PP came first and gained 14 seats; the King invited Rajoy to form a government, however, a majority of Congress was still hostile to him.[18] Despite another second-place showing as PSOE leader, Sánchez was confident he could form a government with the 180 (out of 350) deputies who opposed Rajoy and the PP, including Podemos as well as Catalan and Basque regionalist and separatist parties.[19] Díaz, meanwhile, soundly advocated that the PSOE should remain in opposition and allow Rajoy to form a government.[20] This, added to more defeats of PSOE in Galicia and Basque Country regional elections, being overtaken by Podemos-led alliances and achieving record low results,[21] prompted dissenters—led by Susana Díaz—to call for Sánchez's immediate resignation as PSOE leader [22] and led to a party crisis. Sánchez challenged his critics to defeat him in a primary election;,[23] however, by 1 October he had lost control of both the Executive and Federal Party Committees, resigning as party leader and as an MP.[24][25] A caretaker committee led by Asturian president Javier Fernández Fernández ordered all PSOE MPs to abstain in order to allow Rajoy to remain in office,[26] considering the alternative was a third election which was feared by the caretaker committee as opinion polls were predicting a PP landslide and that the PSOE would be overtaken by Podemos.[27] Ultimately, only 15 PSOE MPs broke party discipline and voted against Rajoy.[28]

Díaz submitted her bid for the 2017 PSOE leadership election, along with Pedro Sánchez and Patxi López. Three former party leaders, Felipe González, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, as well as several former PSOE ministers and regional leaders backed her.[29] Sánchez successfully returned to PSOE's leadership with a 10-point difference over Díaz in the membership vote,[30] took full control of the party and removed all his critics from the party's executive. Former and regional leaders' support proved to be more of a burden rather than a boost for Díaz, as this was exploited by Sánchez to tick her as the establishment's candidate, gaining support from the party's grassroots.[31][32]

In May 2018, national PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez filed a vote of no confidence in the government of Mariano Rajoy that placed him as Prime Minister of Spain with the support of Podemos and Catalan and Basque nationalist parties. Citizens, Diaz's partner in Andalusia and being a party which strongly opposes these movements, withdrew their support to PSOE and Díaz, triggering a snap election.[33] In the 2018 Andalusian regional election support for Diaz's socialist party dropped to 33 seats, losing 14 from the previous election. Once again her political party was the most voted in Andalusia, but Susana Diaz could lose presidency of Andalusia if the People's Party and Citizens join forces with VOX; a new political party without previous representation that retrieved 12 seats and was labelled by Diaz as "far-right".[34]