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Gaspar Llamazares can tell in first person the history of the left since the 80s as a national and regional deputy, as general coordinator of IU and now as an independent heading the list of Call for Oviedo for the Mayor of the Asturian capital.

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GASPAR LLAMAZARES

Logroño, 65 years old. He grew up in Salinas (Asturias). Married and father of a daughter. He studied medicine. After leaving IU in 2019, he aspires to be mayor of Oviedo as an independent in an electoral coalition that integrates his former party, Más País and Izquierda Asturiana.

The people of Oviedo have already become accustomed to crossing paths with Gaspar Llamazares, who enjoys walks around the city while thinking about politics.

How do you explain to your retired friends that you don't want to stop working? Mainly because he was involved in the Sumar project. Revitalizing the political left against the populist one seemed essential to me and I feel involved with the previous project, which is that the regional and municipal elections serve as the basis for the relaunch of Sumar. I was seduced by an area of politics that I did not know, the municipal one, which perhaps I did not reach because I am the son of a rural doctor and I saw that anywhere my father continued to practice and he told me: "I am like a councilor. I don't stop working." I had that kind of reservation, but now with more tranquility and experience, I put only one condition: that we be the candidacy of the solutions and not of the problems. And that we come to reach agreements, not to confront, on the great issues of Oviedo.To reach agreements you have to talk to everyone. With everyone, and give in. Recognize the limits, which in politics is not frequent. In life we learn them as we grow up, but in politics, in recent times there has been the idea that we started from scratch and there were no limits. But it is not true, we all start with a backpack, our past conditions us and relationships force us. One is not going to govern or oppose apart from others. In 2020 he published 'La izquierda herida' and now he has just presented 'Sumar en tiempos de catastrophes'. The titles of his books do not leave much room for imagination. The previous one was From the Democratic Dream to the Populist Nightmare, which was that reverie that part of the left had that populism was innocuous. It is a virus that can allow you to access the government or have greater representation, but you pay for it, because it ends up being the virus of anti-politics. This moment suggested me to reflect on politics in the conditions of force of the populist virus, because it is strengthened to the extent that politics and democracy are weakened. To do so in particularly serious conditions for democracy, with a chain of catastrophes. We knew how we reacted, as happened in the pandemic, first with confusion, then we went through a time of denial and you already agree with the pain and resign yourself. However, with this chain, the pandemic, now the war and the climate emergency, does not give us time to recover. We cannot enter the phase of negotiation and acceptance, and it has many implications in Parliament and other institutions, such as the Judiciary, and with respect to how to govern, with decree laws and at the same time with democratic participation. He lost them because of external circumstances. In Asturias, Podemos and 15-M found an IU that did not accept that there was no backpack, that everything was the confrontation with the enemy and that was paid in Oviedo, the weakest place. But in the rest of the places it is a very important municipal power. We also paid for having been the blue helmets of a tripartite. I am betting on a progressive majority but not with watertight compartments or co-government, which is what we have experienced here and which has brought us very bad consequences. Politics has to have a shared program and a government, not two or three going in opposite directions. It is time to understand each other again, even within the left. It's time to understand each other again dentro on the left. There has been no agreement in Oviedo because previously a candidacy of Somos or Podemos was reached. They thought they were enough for themselves. They did not count on my presence in the IU candidacy and thought about overwhelming IU. And come on, I don't think it's going to be like that. They have sinned of pride. At a certain historical moment that happened to us. When Pablo [Iglesias] presented himself to the European elections, the polls gave us 15% and the management considered that it was a bad business to agree with those who still did not have representation. Now there are others who have also made a mistake with that bet and I hope we can put it back together. It will not be possible before and we will have to do it later.Can the 29-M reconfigure the force of each one on the left? They take the debates on a personal level, and it's not between Pablo and Yolanda [Díaz]. It is whether the left is going to turn its gaze to the melancholy of populism or is really going to try to capitalize on what it has done in government, the management of labor reform, etc. That does not mean denying those who defend the populist strategy, but placing them in the background. In the Government, the few moments of danger of rupture have not been because of the management, but because they want to mix it with populist nostalgia. To start looking for enemies again, that if the president of a certain company, that if Ayuso's brother ... That policy I think ... if at the time I have not shared it because I come from the classic politics of the PC, now even less. You are a government, you have much more responsibility than you think. It is a contempt for institutions that I do not share. He goes as an independent. Is the party model in crisis? The new parties have entered into crisis and it is clearly seen in Ciudadanos. Podemos is not only a personalist party with a praetorian guard, but personalist also, let's say, with an external condition. And the big parties have copied the new ones. Both the PP and the PSOE are personalists, where what works most is the relationship with the baronies and where the structure linked to society is in crisis. It is a rare trip. It is the journey that made the Roman merit in reverse, the cursus honorum. It is an honor to bring the experience of the solidity of ideas. Time also teaches you your limits, and I can apply that in Oviedo to help unblock political life.

  • Gaspar Llamazares Wheat
  • Oviedo
  • Municipal Elections
  • Can
  • Asturias
  • Yolanda Diaz
  • Pablo Iglesias

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