Mass resignation at top of Spain Socialist party to oust leader: Sources

Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sanchez gives a press conference.

The executive of Spain's Socialists resigned Wednesday, a party spokesman said, in a bid to oust their leader Pedro Sanchez.

"Seventeen resignations... were handed in today," the spokesman told AFP.

Under party rules the executive now "must be dissolved and its powers passed on to a caretaker administration," a Socialist lawmaker who opposes Sanchez told AFP, speaking anonymously.