• Politics Yolanda Díaz is already launching to dispute the vote to Sánchez in his goodbye to Podemos: "president", ex of the PSOE and positivism
  • Politics The document from which SUMA(R) was born 10 years ago: the same actors and a failure

On the day after the announcement of her candidacy for the general elections, Yolanda Díaz has placed in Podemos the responsibility of having "stayed out" of the photo of Magariños, where fifteen parties did come to wrap the second vice president of the Government. "Many political formations that today compete with each other knew how to rise to the occasion. Whoever is not there should explain it to the country, "he said on TVE. He went on to affirm that the conflict with Podemos is not due to the configuration of the lists, to the primaries, but to other hidden "interests": "I am not going to reveal them."

The candidate does not retreat. If the act of Sumar already looked bad for Podemos, the conclusion is that it was even worse. Yolanda Díaz flies without "tutelage" or "debts" – (in)direct darts to Iglesias. He made no explicit reference to the purple party in his speech, nor any gesture of recognition or that could be read as an outstretched hand. On the contrary, it proclaimed its independence to lead the space to the left of the left, even challenging the PSOE.

The novelty of Sunday was not her burial of Podemos, a confirmation, but that "I want to be the first president of Spain" that points to Pedro Sánchez, her guarantor in the motion of censure. Díaz had the support of a former PSOE deputy, trans activist, Carla Antonelli, who recently left those acronyms; he saw among his guests a former secretary general of CCOO who was a deputy of the PSOE, Antonio Gutiérrez, and was received by a celebrity, Jorge Javier Vázquez, who campaigned with Ángel Gabilondo in the Madrid elections of 2021.

On Díaz, socialist sources warned from this newspaper, a week ago: "His speech does not differ practically from that made by the president, it is a risky bet to join the fate of the PSOE to his figure. Remember what happened with Manuela Carmena, it was played to promote a person well seen by the left, and that weakened the Socialists in Madrid. That alert was a confirmation yesterday, along with the free takeoff of Podemos.

He barely left an isolated message of concord in a purple key: "There are many people to add" and "we are going to join all of them." In contrast, he overwhelmed the leaders present in affection and offered his moment of acclamation to candidates such as Mónica García and Rita Maestre, of Más Madrid, and Joan Ribó, of Compromís, who will compete against Podemos, and also against the PSOE, of course, in the May elections.

Podemos was not only cornered. He saw how the greatest reference of that political space, at its media peak, complimented three rivals with a campaign tone. Those gestures, cheered, infuriated Podemos. Juan Carlos Monedero: "She is a minister of Unidas Podemos and has campaigned for parties that compete against Unidas Podemos. That's noise. Thunderous." The party officially opted for silence. No comment.

NEW STYLE

Díaz promulgated a new style of exercising leadership and understanding politics that breaks with the tradition of Podemos since 2017 and that challenges its instruction manual from top to bottom. Faced with a strategy of permanent offensive and the search for "polarization" or "hardness" – two nouns that he cited in his speech – he advocated getting rid of "noise" to make "politics with capital letters" and, he stressed, with "tenderness".

It is a friendly face that Pabloism already ridiculed of Íñigo Errejón when they parted ways, long before breaking up, and that then defenestrated for being a "docile" politician.

This is reflected in an evident way in the ideological flags. What is worrying for Podemos, even for the PSOE, is not what Yolanda Díaz said yesterday, but everything she did not say. He did not speak to the excess of the "extreme right" – like Iglesias or Sánchez – nor did he attack judges, journalists or "sewers". He ignored the war and NATO. He did not insult businessmen and bankers; He asked to distribute his profits. Nor did he allude to the monarchy.

He surpassed the President of the Government in positivism. And he placed Alberto Núñez Feijóo and his economic liberalism as a rival. He presented a social democratic agenda, very PSOE, to "win" a country "for the next decade" and claimed the achievements of a "useful policy" that sets aside the "politicking" – that was for ERC, for the labor reform – and focuses on tangible social transformations. It's not just that Díaz became independent from Podemos. It is that he challenged it while taking strides towards Sánchez.

THE DAY AFTER

Now, Díaz has to rebuild the relationship with Podemos. But there are no winks at the moment. In an interview on Monday on TVE, Diaz said that she would have "loved" that the purple party had attended the act of this Sunday of Sumar and that she tried "until the last minute" but has indicated at the same time that this does not mean any brake on the project that will be presented to the autumn general elections. "However, the citizen movement has been launched and we will continue to move forward," he warned.

Díaz has celebrated that there are fifteen political formations (such as IU, the commons, More Country, More Madrid or Compromís), which came to "accompany" the step forward that yesterday gave Sumar, his political project, without any of them having put "conditions" to his presence. As Podemos did. However, and without wanting to go into details, the vice president wanted to make it clear that the disagreement with Podemos is not about the holding of primaries, which she says she will do to configure the lists, but other issues. "I will not reveal the interests of this political formation," he said in reference to Podemos, "but it is not true that we have differences in the formation of primaries."

That is why he has hinted that there are other issues behind it. "They have made a decision and have been left out," he said. "It has to be Podemos that must explain why on a day that was important for Spain and that was a joyful day they were not." "I think that [the primaries] was not the difference," he said.



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  • Yolanda Diaz
  • More Country
  • Nadia Calviño
  • TVE
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  • IU
  • More Madrid
  • Compromís

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