• Politics Podemos bleeds to death in Madrid after breaking with Sumar: now the leader in the capital and his number two are leaving
  • Cisma Sumar accuses Podemos of "transfuguism" and considers denouncing the five deputies

With the new additions Roberto Sotomayor and Carolina Alonso, the list of names is beginning to be endless. In reality, it is the trail of resignations and abandonments that gives continuity to the convulsive history of Podemos since 2014 and that has dotted each of its different periods in these almost ten years of life. The purple party now wants to inaugurate a new time, that of a strategic refoundation to recover the lost throne in the alternative left to the PSOE, currently in the hands of Sumar, however, at the same time that it faces the challenge of reinventing itself, it shows more and more symptoms of decomposition. With a very serious crisis of flight of leaders, candidates and cadres.

Podemos was left in the bones in the regional and municipal elections last May, after a historic debacle that wiped it off the map in parliaments of the relevance of the Community of Madrid or the Valencian Community, among others, in addition to the city councils of their capitals. Now he has just stared into the abyss by deciding to break with Sumar and leave the group that the coalition has in Congress to, from now on, take a risky flight of his own and independent with his five deputies framed in the Mixed Group. They are the spearhead of Podemos' solo adventure to avoid the situation in which Cs has ended up.

The divorce with Sumar also means a political rupture with the parties that compose it, such as the United Left (IU) or the commons. Forces with which they still share joint spaces – thanks to the May meeting – and which are now plunged into the utmost uncertainty about their future. This yields the whopping figure of today there are only 22 members of Podemos who have an act in the Cortes Generales and the 17 regional parliaments and who have declared obedience to the directives of the tandem Ione Belarra and Irene Montero. For now. For some of them have been vehement in demanding understandings with Sumar. Thus, Podemos rests on feet of clay.

These 22 people to face the crisis are distributed as follows. On the one hand, there are the five national deputies of Congress. From there, there are four in the autonomous chambers in the Basque Country, three in Andalusia, two in Extremadura, Navarre and the Region of Murcia; and one each in Catalonia, Aragon, the Balearic Islands and Castilla y León.

Podemos had a deputy in Asturias, Cova Tomé, but recently expelled her from militancy and is at odds with the leadership. The other members of the Podemos-IU groups in Catalonia, Andalusia, Extremadura, La Rioja, Navarra or the Basque Country belong to IU or the commons.

Of the 22 purple seats, four are from the Basque Country, which will renew Parliament before June and with many doubts about what will happen with the candidacy of Podemos. That it seems open to making a pact with Sumar despite the hostilities in Madrid.

There is no need to look for purple deputies in the Community of Madrid, the Valencian Community, Galicia, Cantabria, the Canary Islands or Castilla-La Mancha because the candidacies he was part of did not obtain representatives.

Last Slamming Doors

With this gloomy outlook, Podemos faces a flight of cadres in absolute disagreement with the behavior that the Belarra leadership has with respect to Sumar, and the open war. For this reason, yesterday the candidate in May for the Madrid City Council, Roberto Sotomayor, and his number two on the list, Carolina Alonso, who served as one of the main spokespersons in the Assembly, announced their slamming the door on the party.

His abrupt farewell, with harsh criticism of the leadership for the "bunkerization" of the Belarra-Montero and the absence of internal debate in the decisions, leaves Podemos completely headless in Madrid, the fiefdom where it was born. Just a week ago, the regional leader, Jesús Santos, resigned for the same reason. He followed in the footsteps of Alejandra Jacinto, who was Podemos' candidate for the Assembly in May and who has already ended up in Sumar. In half a year, all visible figures have disappeared from the front line.

The crisis in Madrid is of the utmost seriousness because it forces the reinvention of a party that was swept off the map at the polls by Más Madrid, now one of the beating hearts in Sumar. Without representatives in the Assembly or the City Council, they have to look for leadership again to get their heads out in the most mediatic region.

Five asset managers

The management company to be set up in the Community of Madrid will be the fifth since May. In half a year, the regional leaders of the Valencian Community (Pilar Lima), Aragon (Maru Díaz), the Balearic Islands (Antònia Jover) and Asturias (Sofía Castañón) have resigned. Every casualty has its causes, but Santos' in Madrid is due to the war with Sumar. Will it be the last? All eyes are on Irene de Miguel (Extremadura) and Begoña Alfaro (Navarre), the only one who is in a government, as both defied Belarra by supporting the launch of Sumar in Magariños. As did the leader in Galicia, Borja San Ramón.

For the time being, the break with Sumar has already claimed the resignation of Jéssica Albiach, spokesperson for the commons in Parliament. "I don't want a compact group where everyone thinks the same. That's a cult. Others of us believe in plurality and dissent," lamented Juan Carlos Monedero yesterday on the X network after learning of the casualties in Madrid.

  • Can
  • Ione Belarra
  • Irene Montero
  • Pablo Iglesias
  • Add
  • Yolanda Diaz