Podemos breaks with Sumar to cover up its internal crisis and ends up outside the Congressional committees

Many more battles will come, but it is the end of the cold war on the left to the left of the PSOE. Podemos has pressed the nuclear button and has broken bridges with the Sumar parliamentary group just over 24 hours after taking positions within its quota in the commissions of the Congress of Deputies, the working bodies of the Lower House. And he has done so in the midst of the implosion of the party in the Community of Madrid, after the resignation of its leader, Jesús Santos, amid attacks on the state leadership..

The maneuver comes a month after the party leadership in the capital demanded a congress from the Ione Belarra leadership, which according to purple sources has not yet given any response.. Furthermore, hours after Santos slammed the door, the resignation of the leader of the parliamentary group in the Parliament, Jéssica Albiach, also leader of the purples in Catalonia, was known.. Podemos, with managers at the helm in four territories, was falling apart. The hard core gathered the executive to communicate the political divorce. The purple ones have not let even six months pass before breaking the coalition agreement, three and a half months since the Cortes Generales were established.

Publicly, Sumar has criticized the “disloyalty” of the purples to the three million people who voted for them in the July 23 elections. Off camera, Díaz's people openly described them as “turncoats”. Podemos leaked this decision to Pablo Iglesias' website, which Belarra herself did not want to confirm in the halls of Congress, minutes before it was officially announced.. According to the purple ones, they did notify the Sumar management. According to the group of 26 deputies led by the second vice president, they found out from the press. Specifically, through Iglesias' own website.

Podemos came to Spanish politics to change everything. Today, with renewed strength and convictions intact, we make a difficult but essential decision to continue transforming our country.. We need a feminist, ecological and transformative left. If possible.

— Ione Belarra (@ionebelarra) December 5, 2023

There was a call, according to sources in his group, from Lilith Verstrynge, number three dwelling, to one of Sumar's advisors. We can point out that it was not a typical advisor, but rather it was Josep Vendrell, former chief of staff of the vice president.. Neither Díaz nor the parliamentary spokesperson, Marta Lois, had any knowledge of this decision, they say.. In their ranks, they slipped that the move of the purple ones had to do with covering up the scandals of their organic life. A former leader once close to Iglesias made a similar diagnosis: when there are resignations, they act to stop the possible disbandment of one of the five deputies. Today, they all share space with the Canarian Coalition—which they did call—, UPN and BNG.

Podemos, in the mouth of Irene Montero, called the former Canary Islands representative Meri Pita a “turncoat” when she left her group and joined the mixed group, and this Tuesday she justified the break by stating that this way she would have the capacity for political action. They will stop receiving subsidies from the group (not those from the Ministry of the Interior), and will begin to receive those from the mixed group, where they are already the majority force and will have more time to intervene in the debates.. What they have not been able to ensure, according to the Congress website itself, are their seats on the committees.. Now they will have to negotiate those that correspond to the mixed quota.

Sumar's counterattack

Podemos broke with Sumar one day after the commissions were established, just a week after ensuring that they did not contemplate that scenario. And when both factions are supposedly exploring a new electoral union in Galicia and Euskadi. Parliamentary sources assure that Sumar counterattacked shortly after, registering a document in which he did not recognize the purples as his representatives on the commissions, so they were excluded from them..

According to this explanation, Podemos had not yet registered its registration in the mixed group. And, therefore, Martina Velarde, Lilith Verstrynge and Noemí Santana were left out of the tables of their respective commissions. The purple ones have lost the ability to summon, from the presidency of the Social Rights Commission (Santana), the minister of the branch, Pablo Bustinduy, as they previously had in their power.. Belarra is no longer listed as a spokesperson, which would have allowed her to directly question her successor in the ministry..

A day before the outbreak, Díaz already publicly assumed that he could not control the purple deputies, but no one expected them to move so quickly. Another veteran former leader of the Belarra party identifies this as a strategy typical of the hard core: a coup d'état with a controlled blast that covers up another crisis.. The surprise is that they do it when Sumar had not even approved the parliamentary group that would allow them to be sanctioned.. And when not a single law has reached its first plenary session. Podemos claimed to be exploring the limits of the group, and Sumar refused to blame them..

They now have free hands to act, and throughout the political space there is a clamor that they will participate in the European elections on their own, with Irene Montero as a candidate.. The veto of the former Minister of Equality on Sumar's lists is the biggest grievance that they bring against those of Díaz, although their explanation for her departure from the group incorporates another variable: the refusal of the group's leadership for Belarra to intervene this year. Tuesday in the plenary session, to question the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, about Israel and Palestine.

Belarra has endorsed the flag against the murders of civilians by the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu, although in Sumar they ruled out that no one other than Agustín Santos, former ambassador of Spain to the UN, would speak out on this matter.. In Díaz's ranks they remembered that Podemos has come to consult with its militants about the purchase of Iglesias and Montero's home. And in this case it has decided, without meeting the State Citizen Council, the highest political leadership body, that it was time to leave the group in which they committed to being for four years.. A “disloyalty” varnished with “victimism”, according to Sumar. And a liberation for Podemos.