Díaz changes course in his relationship with the PSOE, with his own agenda and strategy

The date of the investiture debate for the future Prime Minister has not yet been set. Even so, the two parties that aspire to reissue the coalition that has been in charge of the Palacio de la Moncloa during the last legislature have already had their first frontal clash.

What has made the sparks fly publicly just 10 days after the elections were held have been the negotiations to ensure the essential number of votes that would allow Pedro Sánchez to revalidate his position. The PSOE has tried to assert its status as majority partner, with 121 seats, to argue that it is up to it to take charge of “all the steps” with the rest of the parliamentary groups and therefore urge Sumar -which has 31 representatives in the chamber – to stay out of it.

But the space leader who has replaced Unidas Podemos on the political board, Yolanda Díaz, has already made it clear that she does not plan to assume a merely secondary role with resignation.. He demonstrated it yesterday by announcing in an interview on TVE that he will support allowing Catalan to be spoken in the Lower House -which, in addition to one of the demands that Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) has raised in exchange for its support for the left bloc- , in addition to Basque and Galician, a proposal that had not even been previously agreed upon with the representatives of the party with which it still shares the Council of Ministers.

“Myself and Mr. [Jaume] Asens and Sumar are working both in the negotiation with the PSOE and in the negotiation with other formations that are progressive and democratic,” the acting second vice president of the Government warned this Wednesday.. “Therefore, discretion, let each political formation do its job and from Sumar we are already doing ours,” he stressed.

In this way, Díaz responded yesterday to the number two of the Socialists, María Jesús Montero, who in another interview on the public channel the day before had said that who has “the responsibility of articulating the majority” so that Sánchez can be invested again as president ” is the main party that makes up that progressive bloc”, of which he stressed that it has “increased both in the number of votes and seats”. “Therefore, we will be the ones in charge of being able to contact the different political groups and take all the necessary steps, since we already have training during this legislature,” added the also acting Finance Minister in a direct message to the minority partner.

After the scrutiny that left a victory for the PP but without arithmetic options for a parliamentary majority that would take Alberto Núñez Feijóo to La Moncloa, Sumar did not take even 24 hours to announce the appointment of Jaume Asens as negotiator before the independence formations. The leader of En Comú Podem was precisely the person who accompanied Pablo Iglesias to jail in 2018 when the then leader of Podemos visited those convicted of the 1-O consultation.

Now Díaz tries to put himself in that position of favoring “détente” and “dialogue” in Catalonia, which in his day led the purple formation and, in turn, mark the step in this field for Sánchez's team. “Sometimes people in politics are important. Mr. Asens here is; The PSOE knows it very well and I think that all of Spain already knows it,” the vice president brandished this Wednesday.

new leadership

The successor to Iglesias thus debuts her new leadership in the space that has brought together the left of the PSOE with a marked profile of her own. This contrasts with the three and a half years that he has been in charge of the Labor portfolio in which, despite his deep differences with Nadia Calviño, head of the Economic Affairs area, on issues such as the amount of the increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage , he did not usually air them in public.

“We are not going to be in this government to do nothing or to stay as we are,” Díaz warned, taking a reissue of the coalition for granted, but with changes aimed at “gaining rights and moving forward.”. “We are starting the negotiation, but I do want to be clear: for us the program of the government agreement is the key,” he stressed.

In this sense, he said that, although “the ministries have more focus”, what worries them “is not so much the structure” of the new Executive, but “the contents”: “The first thing is what we are going to do and when we have what we will work on who are the best people to do those tasks.

What Díaz did specify is that, unlike her predecessor, she will decide “by consensus with the Prime Minister” the name of the ministers who will be within Sumar's quota of power. This was his expeditious response to whether he would claim the Equality powers, which during this legislature have been in the hands of Podemos, in addition to being marked by multiple controversies.