The PSOE recovers Meritxell Batet to lead its ideological rearmament from the Avanza Foundation

The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) brings back Meritxell Batet for a position of political weight outside the institutional front line. The former president of Congress and former Minister of Territorial Policy has been appointed new president of the Avanza Foundation, the think tank that Ferraz launched to reinforce the socialist discourse against the right and the far-right.

Batet takes over from Manuel Escudero, who passed away in March, and will be accompanied by MEP César Luena as vice-president. The decision corresponds to the foundation's board of trustees and will not have to go through the PSOE Federal Committee this Saturday, a key meeting for the party after one of the most difficult weeks for Pedro Sánchez due to judicial, parliamentary, and internal pressure.

Batet's election has political implications. The PSOE places a leader from the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC) at the head of Avanza, with government experience, parliamentary weight, and an institutional profile that was strongly marked by her time as the third authority of the State. She presided over Congress during the years of the pandemic and the escalation of tension in the hemicycle, before leaving her seat in September 2023 and stepping away from the front line.

Avanza was born in 2024 with a very specific function: to organize ideas, train cadres, and dispute the narrative with the right, in a field where the PP has had the FAES Foundation for years. Sánchez then presented it as a tool to combat hoaxes, disinformation, and the advance of far-right discourses. Now, with the PSOE hit by corruption cases and with the legislature increasingly demanded in Congress, Ferraz once again makes a move in the ideological battle.

The appointment also brings visibility back to a figure who has always maintained a good connection with Catalan socialism and with the institutional core of the party. Batet does not join an executive or assume a classic organic position, but she does go on to direct a space designed to feed program, narrative, and strategy.