Yolanda Díaz assumes this Sunday the witness of Podemos as leader of the alternative left to the PSOE with the announcement of her candidacy for the general elections. The vice president throws behind her back the challenge of achieving the unification of the space that jumped into a thousand pieces in recent years while the main resistance to that unity is being found in the purple party, which struggles with her to retain her power despite the fact that it was Pablo Iglesias who pushed her without asking as the next candidate for the elections. That is the underlying reason why Podemos will be the great absentee of the presentation today, because it has no "certainty" about what is going to happen with it.

The launch of Díaz as a candidate, after almost two years of waiting, is marked by that difficult relationship with Podemos. There is an open confrontation about what role it will play in the reconfiguration of space. The purples demand a preponderant role, but their demand is clashing both with Díaz and with the rest of the forces called to concur under the umbrella of Sumar, who advocate opening a new stage in the internal balances between formations and taking the space, ideologically speaking, out of the "corner of the board" to redirect it back to the "centrality" that was lost in 2017.

Díaz will make his long-awaited announcement this afternoon in a great staging at the Magariños sports center in Madrid, the birthplace of the Estudiantes basketball team, where Pedro Sánchez played for some years. There, before some 3,000 people, the vice president will achieve the milestone of bringing together again under one roof fifteen formations and delegates of the CCOO and UGT unions.

The confirmed parties are Izquierda Unida, Partido Comunista, los comunes, Más País, Más Madrid, Compromís, Chunta Aragonesista, Proyecto Drago, Equo, Alianza Verde, Galicia en Común, Batzarre, Més per Mallorca, Movimiento por la Dignidad y la Ciudadanía de Ceuta and Iniciativa del Pueblo Andaluz. To all of them we must add the president of the European Green Party, Mélanie Vogel, and the president of the Party of the European Left, Walter Baier.

But more than the number of parties, which also, what stands out politically is that many of these forces come to clothe Díaz with their main leaders. Which, on the one hand, is an evident impulse to the vice president in the consecration of her project and, on the other, that deepens the isolation of Podemos in the reconfiguration of that space.

The presence of Alberto Garzón (IU), Ada Colau (Catalunya en Comú) and Enrique Santiago (PCE) leaves Podemos without its three great allies within Unidas Podemos. In addition, to this is added that Díaz is bringing to his candidacy figures who were once under the orbit of Iglesias and who traumatically broke with him. The main one, Íñigo Errejón, who goes with Más País and with the leaders of his Madrid brand (Más Madrid), Mónica García and Rita Maestre, who compete against Podemos in May. There are also the cases of Compromís, now headed by Joan Baldoví and not Mónica Oltra, or Proyecto Drago, by Alberto Rodríguez, which for different reasons separated.

On the presence of Podemos, Díaz and the purples have been negotiating since January, but when they have addressed the truly compromised issues the talks have run aground. The last attempts have been useless because Podemos and Sumar have clashed on the same point: how to make the electoral lists. From this the rest is then removed: the quotas between parties within the coalition, the distribution of economic resources, the number of advisers ... In short: power.

However, Podemos told Sumar that if there was a problem about what the weight of each party should be, the way to solve it was an "open primary". The disagreement over this minimum pact is what Podemos wields to absent itself from the act, because it does not want to commit to a candidate who throws them more doubts than certainties. Díaz only offered to hold "primaries", without surnames, and advocated negotiating the conditions with the other actors.

This Saturday, Ione Belarra made a last attempt at pressure on the Citizen Council. "He has it in his hand that tomorrow Podemos will be in the presentation. It is enough that this afternoon Podemos and Sumar sign a declaration in which we commit to holding open primaries," he said. Despite the internal closing of ranks, not everyone shares the sit-in. There will be charges in Magariños. Parliamentarians, two regional leaders and a multitude of "ex" of the purple party.

According to The Trust Project criteria

Learn more

  • Can
  • Add
  • More Country
  • Compromís
  • More Madrid
  • IU
  • Ada Colau
  • United We Can
  • Catalunya en Comú
  • Alberto Garzón
  • Rita Maestre
  • Joan Baldoví
  • Alberto Rodriguez Rodriguez
  • Yolanda Diaz
  • PSOE
  • Pablo Iglesias
  • Pedro Sanchez
  • CCOO
  • UGT
  • Equo
  • Majorca