Josep Vendrell, Díaz's negotiator: engulfed by Colau, defender of 1-O and leader of the young communists while the USSR fell

Josep Vendrell (Camarasa, Lérida, 1964) knows well what it is to come together, because as general secretary of ICV he had no choice but to surrender to the assimilation process that Ada Colau imposed on all the parties that were nesting to the left of the PSC in Catalonia to found Barcelona en Comú in 2015.

Today it is he who is in charge of engulfing Podemos so that it ends up diluting -with more or less honor- in Sumar, the political artifact with which Yolanda Díaz will run in the general elections.

Both communists -if one comes from the historic PSUC, the other comes from its state partner, the PCE-, Vendrell and Díaz forged a close friendship in Congress during the last legislature as rank and file representatives of those autonomous confluences that coexisted with suspicion of the Shadow of Pablo Iglesias.

After the theoretical retirement of the plenipotentiary leader of the new left and the appointment as Díaz's successor, Vendrell became chief of staff of the later creator of Sumar in 2021 and today he leads the negotiation against time on his behalf to shelter under his acronym, and with its conditions, to Podemos.

We must not expect from Vendrell the impetuous and visceral character of his interlocutors, but rather the cerebral poise of a political plumber who watched the disintegration of the USSR as organization secretary of the communist youth of Catalonia and who hardened himself in underground politics , the truly decisive one, during the tripartite as the most faithful collaborator of Joan Saura. He accompanied him as chief of staff in the Ministry of Institutional Relations and did it again when the ICV leader assumed the tricky Interior portfolio, in which all the inconsistencies of a left that repudiated authority emerged and ended up directing the Mossos d' Squad.

Vendrell was considered the grayest of the young people who took power from Iniciativa when Saura resigned and the party renewed its leadership with Joan Herrera, Dolors Camats and Raül Romeva, later converted to independence to join the Government of Carles Puigdemont and organize the referendum illegal.

Vendrell was eclipsed by this triumvirate in Catalonia, which is why he dedicated himself more to ICV's internal politics as general secretary, and it was in Madrid where he knew how to resist the emergence of Collauism – which politically retired Herrera and Camats – to build a space for himself .

Podemos has before him a survivor, because Colau also tried to relegate him to impose new representatives who knew how to apply his Adamist project and erase all traces of institutionality from the lists of the commons, but Vendrell managed to cling to professional politics. Not without a convenient dose of fortune.

Heading to Madrid

In 2011 he secured a seat in Parliament after a colleague, Laia Ortiz, left him to move to Congress and five years later he would be the one who headed for Madrid after having slipped in as number three in the candidacy of En Comú Podem. When the legislature ended, he was appointed coordinator of the parliamentary group headed by Jaume Asens and remained there until Yolanda Díaz recruited him as her right hand.

Like Colau, Vendrell can be considered a “sovereignty”, that tenuous name with which a good part of the Catalan left identified to occupy that intermediate space that appears between the independence movement and constitutionalism, the one in which all the euphemistic supporters of the right live. let's decide.

When in 2014 Artur Mas decided to organize the 9-N consultation, Vendrell defended on TV3 that “legality cannot be imposed above the democratic will” and when in 2017 Puigdemont raised the stakes with 1-O, the assistant Díaz was kind enough to sign a manifesto along with other members of his party in which they recognized that “the referendum does not meet the democratic guarantees to be considered a binding expression that can be recognized by the international community”, but they defended it due to the need to offer “a strong response to the reactionary and repressive attitude of the PP”. Citing their roots in the PSUC, Vendrell and other comrades asked that the common people be present on voting day and “in the mobilizations that were necessary to promote a referendum with all the guarantees.”. And Colau ended up facilitating illegal voting as mayor of Barcelona after reaching an agreement with the Generalitat.

Today, the integration of Podemos in Sumar emerges as a more complicated undertaking than that of pushing the commons towards sovereignty.