A Podemos leader and a lawyer from the party tried six months ago to register a party under the name “Unidas Podemos”, the same name with which the Morados and IU would attend the regional and municipal elections two months later, on May 28.. It is also the name of the electoral alliance with which they ran in the November 2019 general elections.. And almost the same one they used in 2016. According to the documentation presented to the Registry of Parties, to which El Confidencial has had access, Carlos Gil Cuevas and César López Pérez took the constitution of Unidas Podemos to the notary a few days before Yolanda Díaz, in the midst of an escalation of tension with those of Ione Belarra, makes her candidacy for Moncloa official. They are the same charges that would later register the ghost organization Juntas si se puede. And, in both cases, they established their headquarters in the building that Podemos uses, which they own..

They even presented a logo practically identical to the one that Podemos and IU had been using for almost four years.. The request arrived on April 5, four days after the Sumar leader held her event at the Magariños sports center, which Podemos did not attend.. The General Directorate of Internal Policy stopped them in their tracks, because Unidos Podemos already exists – Podemos registered it, although it has never been used.. And because it is the exact name and almost the same logo that the electoral alliance had used until the general elections prior to 23-J. Then they changed “Unidos” to “Unidas”. The exit record states that, on April 18, the Interior asked them to correct these “deficiencies”. The existence of Unidos Podemos as a party dates back to October 2016, and its headquarters are on Princesa Street, where the Belarra force was initially established..

Specifically, the letter sent from the registry, which supports its arguments on the doctrine of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court, warned that the name of a party cannot “coincide, resemble or identify, even phonetically, with that of any other party.” “. The brand they wanted to register is “practically identical”, they say, to that of Unidos Podemos. And they remember that the acronym “UP”, which Gil Cuevas and López Pérez wanted to attribute to themselves, already exist – Unión Progresista appears as a party in the registry -.

“The presentation of candidacies must be carried out with denominations, acronyms or symbols that do not lead to confusion with those belonging to or traditionally used by other legally constituted parties,” reads article 46 of Law 5/1985 on the General Electoral Regime, reproduced in this communication.. They also asked to be attributed their translation or equivalent in all the official territorial languages spoken in Spain and recognized by the Constitution..

The mention of the proposed logo is just as forceful. “A heart formed by three concentric lines, having a hole on the left side on the outside, and a hole on the right side in the middle,” reads the description of the promoters.. Interior points out that it is practically identical to the one used by the Unidas Podemos electoral coalition. This newspaper announced that Gil Cuevas tried to register a party shortly after Díaz launched his project, and that it took two months to “correct errors”, because the name was “very similar to one that already existed”, as Interior sources stated then..

In the file there is no response from the purple ones, who in June asked to register the ghost formation Juntas si se puede. In this case they were successful, and formally it was still active early Friday afternoon. It is the one that the leader Gil Cuevas registered “by mistake”, along with López Pérez and another lawyer, Jaime Montero Román. To do this, they held a constitutive assembly, drafted some statutes and went to a notary.. Twice, once for each of the matches to be registered. Both statutes are identical with regard to their structure, the layout, names and functions of their management bodies, and even the distribution and name of their respective sections..

The three promoters went to the same notary at the end of March and the beginning of June, respectively.. They registered the building that houses the Podemos offices as their headquarters, in both cases. And, in the notarial deed, they stated as their address, for the purpose of notifications, the headquarters of the purple ones..

On Thursday, three and a half months after the Interior clarified how to proceed to delete the ghost platform from the registry, Gil Cuevas demanded its deactivation, this time meeting the requirements to achieve it.. His claim reached the registry less than an hour and a half after his party received the query from this medium.. Gil Cuevas is part of the State Citizen Council, the highest political direction body of the organization. He worked as an assistant to Pablo Iglesias in the second vice presidency, and in June he was presented from an official Podemos account on social networks as the head of Sumar's list for Segovia for 23-J, although the message was deleted and was finally not candidate.

For his part, lawyer López Pérez represented the party in the negotiation of the Employment Regulation File (ERE) through which the purples fired 70% of their staff, at the end of August.. Between 2021 and 2022 he was sent to Asturias as legal representative of the formation. The critical sector identified him as the position that decreed the intervention of the regional accounts just a few hours before the primary voting began to elect its new leadership.. In his doctoral thesis, Iglesias calls César López a “forever friend”, and former employees of the organization identify the lawyer as a person of complete trust of the historical leader of Podemos, who would have placed him in charge of the Regulatory Compliance department.

The Belarra party stood out from the first minute of the registration of Juntas si se puede. He pointed directly to Gil Cuevas, when his lawyer's connection to these actions was not yet public.. He stated that the leader acted motu proprio and “by mistake”. Although one holds an organic position and the other is a lawyer with weight, Podemos does not want to consider that they are the same people who, five months ago, wanted to register a new political force with the acronym of Unidas Podemos.. Even though the Interior notifications reached their headquarters.