Sánchez loses control of the progressive majority with the flight of Podemos's five vital votes

There are not enough problems with the dependence on the independentists that the coalition government has wanted to seek more. Not even three weeks have passed since the inauguration of Pedro Sánchez, and the PSOE and Sumar have lost control of the progressive majority. The 153 votes they had in Congress – 122 from the socialists and 31 from Yolanda Díaz's platform – have remained at 148, with the flight of the five Podemos deputies to the mixed group.

The left-wing Executive thus sees the parliamentary majority it had in Congress (179) disappear, forged after the pacts with ERC, Junts, PNV, Bildu, the BNG and, eventually, the Canarian Coalition, which was not going to be a fixture in all voting. Now, although the logical thing is that the five purple votes remain linked to this bloc, the reality is that Podemos is outside the influence of the two Government formations and it will be necessary to agree with them on all initiatives, including the budgets.. Due to their own efforts to differentiate themselves from Sumar, it was already expected that they would make their weight count, but always subject to their parliamentary discipline..

Their departure to the joint now grants them total freedom and more prominence in the debates in the plenary session and in the commissions.. The total breakup was a possibility that no one ruled out due to the magnitude of the war between Yolanda Díaz and Pablo Iglesias and their political heirs, Ione Belarra and Irene Montero.. They attended together on June 23, despite the fact that at that time relations were already very deteriorated, and they reached a kind of marriage of convenience.

But from the day after the elections, they resumed the fight even more strongly. Podemos pressed to have a ministry or at least a presence in the Government. Díaz did not accept it, knowing that the balance in the parliamentary group was very precarious.. Three and a half months after the constitution of the Chamber, the purples have blown up the bridges.

Knowledgeable sources explain that with the confirmation that they were left without representation in the Executive, Podemos decided to move to the mixed. Although they kept it a secret until this Tuesday. They announced it by surprise to the leadership of the parliamentary group, moments after it was reported on Iglesias' television, Canal Red.. Then Yolanda Díaz also knew it, according to Sumar. Afterwards, purple number three, Lilith Verstrynge, telephoned one of her parliamentary assistants, but the news was already spreading like wildfire..

The PSOE believes that Yolanda Díaz has failed

The confusion yesterday in Sumar and in the PSOE was absolute. Different socialist sources blame the second vice president and Minister of Labor for having a small waist for conducting the dialogue with Podemos. Although there is no doubt that Iglesias wanted to protect her from the beginning, the PSOE never understood her resistance to an electoral pact and her determination now to not provide them with a single space in the Executive or in the parliamentary group.. “He has not known how to manage it and has gone to blow them up,” party sources say..

When, after 23-J, the problems of coexistence between Sumar and Podemos were already evident, the socialist part of the Government hid behind the fact that the solution to that conflict corresponded exclusively to Díaz. Little by little, they began to assume that the purple ones were going to function as an isolated party but within Sumar's group.. But they always minimized the risk of not counting on their votes, with the certainty that they would never dare to leave the progressive orbit and ally themselves with the PP and Vox..

That conviction began to break yesterday, after the shock of the flight of the five parliamentarians—one of them, Belarra herself—to the mixed group, where they will coexist with the BNG, CC and UPN.. The PSOE spokesperson in Congress, Patxi López, acknowledged that “the division of the left is never good news”: when that happens, he added, “the right wins.”. “I am convinced that no one on the left is going to slow down or paralyze the actions of a progressive government,” he said about the loss of Podemos votes..

Sumar also placed that risk at the center of the debate. Its spokesperson in the lower house, Marta Lois, assured that it does not contemplate that anyone “wants to row against or put at risk the progressive coalition Executive”, in the midst of what she described as “harassment” by the “reactionary right-wing bloc”. Off camera, their people called them “turncoats” and disgraced the fact that they were capable of consulting their militants about the purchase of Iglesias and Montero's home, but not about the decision to “break the electoral agreement.”.

The support of Podemos is absolutely essential to prevail over the sum of PP, Vox and UPN, which makes its five seats vital. As important as the seven from Junts and the seven from ERC, which have earned an amnesty law, two dialogue tables with verifiers, the transfer of Rodalies and 15,000 million in debt. But the temptation of the PSOE has been to minimize its impact. Among ordinary deputies and even among some members of the Government, there was a theory that it is just one more difficulty among many that they have faced.. As if they were capable of solving everything, just because they had solved other conflicts before or put together a new Government, which almost everyone considered lost..

“Tanned” in the negotiation

Not all approaches were so linear. Important socialist sources maintained that “we are already experienced in talking to many groups to get laws,” assuming that they will be forced to negotiate everything with them.. The PSOE, at least, ensures that the dialogue, like another party in the bloc, will be carried out by them and not Sumar. But, as this newspaper published, what worries them most is the breakup of the progressives in the face of the next elections, Galician, Basque and European.. “A left divided again in three electoral calls, that is not good,” they acknowledge.

For their part, in Sumar they were surprised, angry and disappointed. It was an open secret that the situation was unacceptable, and Díaz herself made it clear in an interview on TVE on Monday.. Nobody expected that, in the middle of a large internal crisis, the purples would launch such a risky maneuver. It is a play typical of the Iglesias-Montero manual, according to a former leader. And that catches them in the midst of negotiating the lists in Galicia and Euskadi, in the absence of the electoral advance in both regions.

Podemos justified itself by arguing that they had been made invisible, that Díaz made it “impossible” for them to do politics.. And Sumar counterattacked by expelling them from the parliamentary commissions, which they accessed within their group's quota.. None of the parties anymore hides that they can't stand each other, but Podemos has not forced the machine so that its deputies found themselves sanctioned or expelled from the group.. They have decided to take a leap that leaves their hands tied, and that breaks with the balance of forces that, until now, Sánchez and Díaz believed they had..