Podemos agitates the start of the campaign and accuses the PSOE and those related to Yolanda Díaz of wanting to erase them from the map

Podemos starts the electoral campaign with the knife between its teeth in which it must throw the rest to guarantee at least 5% of the votes in the Community of Madrid, the only way to guarantee its survival in the institutions. The CIS this Thursday places them slightly above this border, and for this reason Ione Belarra has given the starting signal in the Madrid neighborhood of Orcasitas, covering her candidates for the Assembly and the City Council. The Minister of Social Rights has demanded “to go with everything” against the right, to wrest both seats from the PP, and warned that the “political, judicial and media right”, which “is not democratic”, will also put all the meat in the grill.

Madrid is, together with the Valencian Community, the fort to defend most fiercely and both the general secretary and the number two, Irene Montero, plan to visit both places in just 48 hours, stopping in Valencia on Friday and returning to Madrid on Saturday. Meanwhile, their misgivings about the intentions of the PSOE grow day by day and shake the way to the polls. The purple ones, who have spent months -even years- pointing out that different political, economic or media actors want to erase them from the map, these days they focus on their government partner. Different leaders show their astonishment at the neglect they have been subjected to in recent weeks, especially with regard to Pedro Sánchez's surprise announcements on housing, but also with the recent deployment of the Executive against the drought.

The line of guarantees of the Official Credit Institute (ICO) so that those under 35 years of age can buy a home, whose authorship they attribute to the banking sector, has already activated several alarms. The fact that they did not even notify the ministers of United We Can of the extraordinary Council of Ministers further fueled the bonfire of mistrust. They do not understand that these weeks the PSOE makes all its decisions alone, they accuse it of giving up selling the image of minimal cohesion within the Executive. And they believe that, beyond the obvious struggles for different medals, lies the desire to snatch all the flags from them, to suffocate them politically. It is an old impulse of the socialists, there is an abundance of a veteran territorial ex-leader, and the ultimate goal is to return to the bipartisan scheme.

“Sánchez is announcing things without rhyme or reason, without warning,” says a leader. Another points out that a part of the PSOE considers them annoying and does not want to assume that they are needed to govern. Neither the 15-M cycle has been closed, he points out, nor is Podemos an organization without vital signs. The waters go down calmer in regards to Yolanda Díaz, who this Wednesday juggled to wrap up the regional leader and purple candidate for the Alcorcón City Council, Jesús Santos, but did not speak in the presence of the candidates for the Presidency and the City Council of the capital, Alejandra Jacinto and Roberto Sotomayor. That Ione Belarra's match scored the first goal against Más Madrid, in Díaz's two-way campaign, softens eroded and angry relations, but the diagnosis remains the same. In the struggle with the PSOE to be ignored with the measures on the drought, at least, they go hand in hand, but the differences are still latent.

Purple sources maintain that Díaz and his allies remain convinced that being “moderates” they can be “more tolerated” than Podemos, but warn that this weakens the drive for transformation with which “the challenge of bipartisanship” was born.. In terms of the program, the lack of unity between purples and Sumar is “hardly justifiable”, but the differences in the forms abound, or the fact that the vice president did not give key battles for the purples, such as the one that concerns the sending of arms to Ukraine, keep coming up. The comparison of Díaz's performance with the slamming of the door by Íñigo Errejón, in 2019, is recurrent, but in this case the complexity of the situation “is eight times greater”, a former leader abounds. Both parties say they are determined to contract a kind of marriage of convenience in the face of the generals, but the purple do not trust many of the allies of the promoter of Sumar.

The 15-M had a hard time burying bipartisanship so that now they are trying to resuscitate it.

The most surprising thing is that it is Más Madrid who is playing the game of the PP and PSOE.

For those looking for differences between the two projects, here is a clear one 👇 pic.twitter.com/dRRl4TUMu9

— Roberto Sotomayor 🔻 (@RbSotomayor) May 8, 2023

They interpret that these related forces, such as Más Madrid or Compromís, by not waging the battles they consider key, give oxygen to bipartisanship, shrinking the political space they want to expand. In public, one of the clearest in this regard has been Sotomayor himself, who recently stated on Twitter that Más Madrid is “playing the game of the PP and PSOE”, trying to “resurrect” the bipartisanship. The Valencian vice president and candidate for the Generalitat, Héctor Illueca, did the same by putting Joan Baldoví (Compromís) and the “bipartisanship, the big media and the employers” in the same bag.. He assures that they go out “in a whirlwind” to defend the president of Mercadona, Juan Roig, highly criticized by Podemos, who these days defends the creation of a public supermarket.

In a video published on his social networks, Illueca twice mentions the Compromís candidate for the Generalitat along with the rest of the actors, and goes so far as to affirm that Roig is “a boss” and “The Godfather, but the godfather of some”. “Either you are with the people, or you are with the billionaires”, abounds. These speeches, which at the moment the state leadership does not make explicit to these extremes -although leaders like Belarra have shared this message-, have been reflected in the video released by Podemos before its spring festival, in mid-April. A good part of the ideas that are the backbone of them are truffled in the interventions of the majority of spokespersons, although they resist being more explicit.

🔴 This is the truth: a public supermarket chain would mean lower prices for families, better conditions for small farmers and ranchers, and more rights for workers. So why are some opposed? Here I explain it… 👇🎥 pic.twitter.com/YbWTDKyoey

– Hector Illueca (@Hector_Illueca_) May 10, 2023

“These elections are going to try to make Podemos disappear,” Belarra said on Tuesday, from Vallecas. That the party describes itself as the victim of different attacks is not new, but rather a constant almost since its inception; the question is who are, in his opinion, his potential executioners. After the presentation of Díaz's candidacy for Moncloa, on April 2, the purples celebrated that their leaders complied with the order not to attend Díaz's act, and affirmed that the promoters of Sumar had not managed to break their organization.

Yes, they had been affirming for weeks that the vice president and the political forces aligned with her project wanted to delay the negotiation to form the candidacy for the generals until after 28-M, waiting for the bump that most polls predict for the purple ones. “What we have to show all those who want to make Podemos disappear is that they are showing only a wish and not a reality,” Belarra said on Tuesday.. Meanwhile, they are emphasizing differences with the PSOE, but they believe that it would be better to stage them with an eye on 28-M, and not certify them day by day, among surprise announcements from the president.

That the Central Electoral Board rejected this Thursday the appeal presented by Podemos and Izquierda Unida against RTVE's information coverage plan for 28-M, considering that they are discriminated against in the distribution of time, also helps to reinforce the message that they fight with one hand tied behind their back. The problem, as recognized by a veteran territorial leader, is that when the purple organization feels attacked, it entrenches itself, feeding the theory of “conspiracy” against the purples. And the political space is “shrinking”.