Yolanda Díaz takes over from Podemos rejecting "tutelas": "I don't belong to anyone... I want to be the first president of Spain"

• Análisis Díaz seeks to refound an empathic Podemos
• Politics Everything that separates Yolanda from Podemos

Now yes yes yes Yolanda Díaz is officially a candidate for the general elections and opens with her project Add a new stage in the alternative left to the PSOE. The vice president of the Government stops "listening" and assumes from Podemos the relay in the leadership of that space. With those chevrons, he faces as his first great challenge the unification under the same electoral umbrella of the pieces broken in recent years. Fifteen political forces among which for now is not Podemos, which has been the great absentee of the launch in the act of this Sunday in Madrid for its resistance to hand over power.

"I'm going to step up. I want to be the first president of my country, the first president of Spain," Díaz proclaimed. They are the magic words that so many expected after two years of small steps forward, of a pampered construction with 25 acts of "listening" in 17 autonomous communities and difficult internal balancing acts after being appointed by Pablo Iglesias as his successor.

Díaz is now stripped of that designation to fly by herself, carried in volandas by IU and the commons and by other parties that will formally land from June, such as Más País, Más Madrid or Compromís. Waiting to know what will happen with Podemos, which for the moment is isolated in the process of reconfiguring the alternative left. And divided, because members of the purple party have defied the directive of not going to be wrapping the candidate either in person or through statements of support.

"Today everything begins!", exclaimed Díaz, before a euphoric and dedicated audience of more than 3,000 people at the Magariños sports center in Madrid, where the illusion of a new beginning, of other ways of doing politics and of a "new country project for the next decade" was breathed.

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Yolanda Díaz, 25 years of climbing, 'she did not want to', among exquisite political corpses: "She betrayed me"

• Writing: LUIS FERNANDO LÓPEZ Madrid

Yolanda Díaz, 25 years of climbing, 'she did not want to', among exquisite political corpses: "She betrayed me"

Applauding Díaz from the front rows were the main figures of the space such as the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau (commons); Alberto Garzón (IU), Enrique Santiago (PCE), Íñigo Errejón (Más País), Mónica García and Rita Maestre (Más Madrid) or the mayor of Valencia, Joan Ribó (Compromís), among many others. He has presented all of them to be acclaimed by the attendees, has given them "thanks" and to those who are candidates in the May elections he has given them a powerful image of support for their electoral campaigns to the detriment of Podemos.

"Thank you Alberto [Garzón] for your enormous generosity and for knowing where you need to be; thank you Enrique [Santiago], for your high vision; thank you Íñigo for your intelligence for a new country project, "he said about some of them.

He also thanked other forces, until reaching the fortnight, such as Chunta Aragonesista, Drago Project, Equo, Green Alliance, Galicia in Common, Batzarre, Més per Mallorca, Movement for Dignity and Citizenship of Ceuta and Initiative of the Andalusian People. 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.

Díaz has presented Sumar as an "open house" to transform Spain but also to bring together parties, social movements and citizens who want to "recover hope in politics" and in "useful politics". Although the act has been marked by the disagreement with Podemos on the conditions of its entry into this future candidacy, she has avoided making express allusions to the Ione Belarra, Irene Montero or the purple party. But he has left the message that there are still "many people to add" and "we are going to join all of them".

However, it has marked its own profile and its differences with the ways of Podemos, betting on transversality in the social, a friendlier style and with a more "useful" and pragmatic transformative objective. They said, he said, that politics was "polarization", "a thing of the political parties and not of the citizenship", to be "very hard and rough" with the political adversary because Spain was a divided country, he criticized. "From Sumar we have gone against the current, we have shown that politics with capital letters is something else," he stressed. It is "dialogue", "agreement" and "uniting wills, hopes and dreams". In short, "it is to unite all the people who want to take a step forward to improve our country."

That declaration of intentions, which he has exemplified with raising the minimum wage, recognizing unemployment for domestic workers, approving the riders law or the pension reform or the regulation of rental prices, has been finished by affirming that Sumar is to "solve the problems of the people" and "broaden democracy." "We are not here to confront others" or "occupy an electoral space," he said, but to "transform people's lives." "We have come to win the country."

"Politics is not a personal matter"

In one of the powerful messages of his speech, and reminiscent of the one that raised Mónica García in Madrid in front of Iglesias, Díaz has openly detached himself from the finger of the former secretary general of Podemos and his attempts to tie her short, rejecting "tutelas" or "debts". First, you have read a quote from Rosalia de Castro. "I am free. No one can stop the march of my thoughts and they are the law that governs my destiny."

And then he finished: "Women are nobody's. And I, woman, am also nobody's. Sumar is a feminist force and belongs to no one. It is necessary that we proclaim it, because it seems that even today we must carry a preposition 'of' attached to our name, to determine our adhesions and our debts. We are tired of guardianships, of being ignored. Very tired. And we will continue to say it: we belong to no one but ourselves. You don't need to shout it anymore, you understand it very well."

As for his candidacy, Díaz explained that he has taken so much time to reflect because he has had "many doubts" about whether or not to be a candidacy. "I think it's not bad to hesitate before deciding, and then bet with determination" to take on the challenge.

He explained that he is aware of this transcends his figure. "This is not my thing. I've learned at home that politics is not a personal matter."

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• Compromís
• IU
• Pedro Sanchez
• Yolanda Diaz
• Irene Montero
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• Pablo Iglesias
• Ada Colau
• Alberto Garzón
• Rita Maestre
• Joan Ribó
• Equo