Alvaro Carvajal Madrid

Madrid

Updated Tuesday, January 30, 2024-14:19

  • Politics Podemos' crisis worsens amid complaints of "cheating" by two canceled critical candidacies

  • Crisis The 'number three' of Podemos, Lilith Verstrynge, resigns by surprise, leaving the party with one less deputy in Congress

  • Politics Pablo Iglesias kicks Monedero off his television days after striking down another of his presenters

Jaume Asens

also breaks the Podemos card. The Catalan politician, who was in the Executive with

Pablo Iglesias

and then with

Ione Belarra

, revealed this Tuesday that he left the purple party a long time ago

and

that he made that decision because the party is "more closed", "less transversal" and "more sectarian".

This was stated by the former deputy of

Unidas Podemos

in an interview on

Cafè d'Idees

, on RTVE Catalunya, in which he confessed that it is a "painful breakup" for him, after a relationship with the party that goes back to to its founding times and in which it maintained a close relationship with Iglesias.

Asens was part of the first

Podemos

State Citizen Council that emerged from the

Vistalegre I

congress , in October 2014. Years later he also joined the Iglesias Executive, just as he did the same in June 2021 when the very delicate moment of the replacement of the former leader in the General Secretariat to make way for Belarra.

During his career in Podemos, the lawyer has always played a liaison role between the purple party and

En Comú Podem

, as well as with

Ada Colau

. He was in turn a fundamental piece of the commons in Congress.

When the battle between Podemos and

Yolanda Díaz

became more evident, Asens moved further and further away from Podemos, as also happened to the Commons, until he reached the point of disengaging from the purple party and resigning as a militant. His position was to align himself with Díaz and

Sumar

. The former deputy has now expressed that decision to tear up the card, which he had kept secret, and has regretted that "the Podemos of 2015" does not look like today. "Right now I don't recognize the Podemos that currently exists."

"Between the Podemos of 2015, which had a very transversal character, and the current Podemos there is an important difference. The Podemos of 2015 is more represented in today's Sumar than in today's Podemos," he stressed.

And what is Podemos like today? Asens' response has been blunt: "Much more closed, less open, less porous, less transversal, more sectarian."

Regarding his relationship with Iglesias, Asens has pointed out that he believes that they "still" are "friends" but that he considers that he is not the same. "I recognize a part, I think we are still friends, but there are parts where I recognize it. Not only from the political era but from before. And there are others that I find difficult," he said.

Currently, Asens has been collaborating with Sumar. His role as amnesty negotiator with

Puigdemont

and

Junts

, as well as with

ERC,

has been well known in recent months. He was one of the people who accompanied Yolanda Díaz to Brussels to meet with the former Catalan president despite his status as a fugitive from Justice.