Chaos and confinement in Asturias, the region of a thousand troubles of Podemos

“Until Monday at midnight, if necessary, we will be locked up”. This is how firm the candidate of Podemos in Asturias, Covadonga Tomé, shows herself to demand that the list that she heads the autonomic ones and that the militancy chose be the one that registers in the elections. “I don't see any other way”. And it is that number four on that list, Jorge Fernández, is sanctioned for six months by the guarantees committee and, although he considers that this sanction does not disable him, the regional management does not think so. To leave the list, Ana Taboada, the secretary of Municipalist Policies, would enter. Faced with this situation, Tomé, members of the list and related parties have been locked up in the Podemos headquarters in Gijón since Thursday afternoon.

But the situation of Podemos in Asturias, which has ended in confinement, is not just for a position on a list. It comes from afar and has ended up becoming entrenched three days after the electoral candidacies close. It arose in 2021 with the election of the coordinator in Asturias, the national deputy Sofía Castañón, which ended in complaints of irregularities by her opponent, Daniel Ripa. Precisely these criticisms and complaints earned him his expulsion from the party and he was required to deliver the act of deputy, something that he has not done. One of the party's founders in the region, Andrés Fernández Vilanova, was also expelled.

The coordinator, Sofía Castañón, has been on leave for months, almost at the same time that the organization secretary, Alba García, resigned in January of this year.

Since then, the tension has increased between the so-called critical sector and the regional and national leadership. In the last few hours, the general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, encouraged Tomé to “present himself and campaign” because he says that he has their “support” and from Asturias they assured him that they put all the resources of the party for it. “They have not given me a single euro for my trips to campaign, I do not have anyone from the press, I send my own calls and on the party's social networks there are only two tweets of mine,” Tomé told EL MUNDO in contrast.

Last weekend the Asturian candidate went to Zaragoza to the spring party of the purple formation with the intention of being able to get closer to Belarra, but ended up denouncing that the management resorted to security guards to avoid that meeting. Watchmen who, he assured, followed him everywhere.

I took explodes against Belarra: “Not one euro for the campaign”

The regional management, which Rafael Palacios exercises on an interim basis, considers that the candidate, with this confinement, is looking for excuses “to break” with the organization and speaks of a “complicated” situation.. And she's not the only one in the party. Palacios himself is the candidate for mayor of Langreo and in the last hours four of the eight councilors have resigned. They ask that this election be annulled considering that “the statutes of Podemos were violated.”

The situation is such in the formation that not even the left in Asturias has negotiated with them. The confluence of Call for Asturias that adds Más País and other formations will not have Podemos because, as they themselves say, “there has been no interlocutor.”

In the regional parliament, the purple formation is not doing better. Of the four deputies that he removed, one, Nuria Rodríguez, has resigned in recent days precisely due to discrepancies with the management, and Daniel Ripa is expelled. Only two remain, including the interim coordinator. The candidate was recently opened a preliminary report by the occupational health committee, which is investigating her for, among other things, “aggressive attitudes”. Tomé insists that all sanctions must be withdrawn.

What neither side wants to reveal is what it will do if they do not reach an agreement before the closing of nominations. Tomé is not saying whether he will eventually run even if his list is not respected. “I do not contemplate that situation,” he admits, nor does the leadership talk about whether, in that supposed case, he would propose another person as head of the poster at the last moment, which would be something unusual from a political and electoral point of view.