Tsunami in Podemos: only 4 leaders of the initial nucleus reach Congress (and one is Errejón)

The combat was partially settled a month and a half ago, but the result will be especially visible from 17-A, with the photograph of the new Cortes Generales. That same day, four of those who were leaders of the first Podemos will sit in their seats in the Congress of Deputies, and one of them is Íñigo Errejón, who left the party in January 2019.. Discounting the leader of Más País, in the lists of Sumar por Madrid on 23-J, only Ione Belarra, Javier Sánchez Serna and Noemí Santana are now elected parliamentarians, among the more than 60 leaders who made up the first State Citizen Council of Podemos (November 2014). None of them were in their first executive.

With the departure of Pablo Iglesias, in 2021, an era began without a single one of the founders of the party at the helm of the ship. Juan Carlos Monedero has a seat in the executive, but has not held an organic position since 2015. There are more figures of that original Podemos with public positions in formations aligned with Díaz (Más Madrid and Más País) than in the house bench in Congress: from Errejón (elect deputy) to Rita Maestre, spokesperson for Más Madrid in the city council of the capital, through Eduardo Fernández Rubiño (councilor of Más Madrid) and Jorge Moruno (deputy in the Assembly). And many other members of that Citizen Council collaborate with Sumar or have been seen at various party events.

Belarra, general secretary after Iglesias, was not elevated to the executive until 2017, and Santana, former counselor in the Government of the Canary Islands, had not held a seat in the Lower House until now.. The debacle of 28-M prevented the purples from revalidating the coalition on the islands, and the party sought accommodation for the Canarian leader on the lists for the general elections on 23-J. This absence of referents from that period is another of the faces of the earthquake suffered by what was the hegemonic force on the left to the left of the PSOE until a few months ago. Before the formation of Sumar, in the group Unidas Podemos-En Comú Podem-Galicia en Común, the purples had 23 deputies. Today there are only five, less than those who hold the PCE card.

Belarra, Santana, Sánchez, Lilith Verstrynge and Martina Velarde will represent the purples in the XV Legislature, who have been claiming their “autonomy” within the parliamentary group, and criticizing the electoral result, since the night of 23-J. They have the same deputies as IU, but the agreement stipulates that they receive 4% more resources. They keep 23%, the same as Compromís, Más Madrid and the common ones together.

And they lose figures like Irene Montero, acting Minister of Equality and the main vetoed on the Sumar lists. Also to the leader Rafa Mayoral, or to his last parliamentary spokesman, Pablo Echenique, who plans to return to his position at the CSIC. The future of Mayoral, the only member of the first purple executive that today resists at the top, and especially that of Montero are unknowns that, to date, they have not wanted to clear up.. For now, there is a leader with enormous weight in the previous parliamentary group, Txema Guijarro, secretary general of United We Can and former member of the purple executive, who is already part of Sumar's quota in the new legislature..

Other prominent references, such as the Secretary of State for Social Rights and economic manager of Podemos, Nacho Álvarez, have not resigned from their position in the purple party, but his role as economic spokesman for Sumar, during the campaign to 23-J, awoke suspicions among his colleagues in the leadership of Belarra. Alejandra Jacinto, housing spokesperson for Díaz's party, and also a member of the purple executive, remains, like Álvarez, outside Congress and in a kind of limbo, since the Podemos statutes do not contemplate double militancy, which today does is allowed in sum.

In fact, in addition to Álvarez, Errejón, Maestre, Fernández Rubiño or Moruno, there are at least half a dozen members of that first purple leadership who collaborate with Díaz.. Jaume Asens, ex-president of the parliamentary group, defenestrated as head of the list of commons by Barcelona, but recovered to build bridges with Carles Puigdemont in the face of negotiations on the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, or Pablo Bustinduy (spokesman in international politics). Also Clara Serra (one of the feminist references), Segundo González, Sara Bienzobas or Belén Guerra.

In addition, of those more than 60 leaders of the first version of Podemos, many have been seen in various events of Sumar. Laura Casielles (in her day Iglesias' press officer), Eduardo Maura, Jorge Lago, Miguel Ardanuy or Nagua Alba, among others, have done it..

Alba, former general secretary based in Euskadi, asked for the vote for Bildu on March 28, before the presence of ETA members convicted of blood crimes on their lists came to light. and that he confessed that he would vote for Pedro Sánchez in the general elections of 23-J. Only three figures from that Podemos will take possession of a seat for the same formation. A purple former leader veteran, aware of how all the pieces have turned in his party, recalled the famous phrase of Alfonso Guerra about how Spain was not going to recognize it “not even the mother who gave birth to it.” The metaphor made itself.