Yolanda Díaz's allies refuse to enter into battle with Iglesias: "You have to ignore them"

On the night of 23-J, the left was filled with euphoria at an unexpected electoral result, while PP and Vox saw their options to govern blow up. Minutes later, Pablo Iglesias already warned that the five deputies with purple cards would report directly to the leadership of Podemos, and hours later he questioned the result of Yolanda Díaz. Ione Belarra fell asleep later. Groundhog Day for a large part of the formations integrated in Sumar, which in private expressed their indignation at the depth charges launched by a party that ran within the same candidacy, to which the polls predicted its disappearance if it had presented separately. And that, before, during and after the campaign, he has charged against the strategy, has criticized the allies or has vindicated figures who on the platform understand that, today, there remain.

As a general rule, the parties within the coalition led by Díaz are clear about it.. “You have to ignore them,” they say. They insist that, every day, Podemos addresses a smaller audience. Also that his messages “have less and less impact”. They consider that they have been left out of the public debate and that “more and more people are tired” with their performance. That is, by questioning the course set by the space leader. By repeating that the veto of Irene Montero was “cruel” and “unjustified and will make those who made this decision regret it for years,” in the words of the historic purple secretary general. And with continuing to pronounce publicly on the internal life of the coalition, just what all the leaders of the left previously considered had taken a serious toll on them..

“Very quiet. We must not engage in provocations”, summarizes a Sumar leader, who asks to “focus on what is important”, which is what “those who have voted for us” want.. “Its ability to wear is very limited,” says another prominent figure in the political space of the left to the left of the PSOE. They defend that the purple ones spend too much time talking about the past and organic life, to object live about the current course, when they are no longer the hegemonic force and barely have those five of 31 deputies. Even to boast of their own achievements from the Government, but they barely focus on proposals for the future.

There is a part of the leaders under the umbrella of Sumar, on the other hand, who ask to “normalize the discrepancies”, without falling “into the monotheme that Iglesias claims”. Put in silver, avoid “closing ranks”, say that the results on 23-J were “historic” or incur in “absurd vendettas”, such as comparing the political moment of 2023 with that of 2015. Read without context, this Sunday's result represents a setback, since they have lost more than 700,000 voters with respect to the “worst result” of Unidas Podemos, as Belarra and Iglesias reproached Díaz.

The point is that the majority of Sumar's allies, as well as the hard core of the vice president, are elated to have survived weeks of internal warfare, the activation of the useful vote by the PSOE and the collapse in the polls.. For having managed to mobilize the left two months after other elections, even though it is the PSOE that has experienced growth.

The leadership of Podemos, except for the leaders who were also candidates, has opted for a low profile in the campaign until Belarra multiplied his presence, in the intermediate stretch. Various allies of Sumar accused them of sitting idle, of not fighting at the risk that the PP and Vox would form a government, while the purples claimed to have been “made invisible”, assuring that the second vice president had “resigned” from feminism. With Belarra at the helm, they vindicated Montero, his legacy, and even the “historical responsibility of his militancy.”.

Iglesias broke in to charge against Díaz's strategy, which Podemos had already identified as wrong, some time ago. They are convinced that, with a much more combative speech in substance and form, they would have achieved a better result.. And there, the rest of Sumar's allies deny the greatest.

They understand that, without the difficult confluence achieved, without Díaz's leadership, the result would have been devastating for the left.. More, if possible, after the debacle in the regional and municipal elections, in which Podemos was expelled from parliaments such as Madrid or Valencia. Compromís accused the coup; the commons lost the Barcelona City Council, and Más Madrid fell back in the city council, but grew in the Assembly. The setback was especially serious for the purple. “They do not connect with people on the street, who are very happy about what happened,” they abound.

On election night, a large part of these leaders assumed that Podemos and Montero herself, who withdrew from the public spotlight to focus solely on her ministry after being excluded from the lists, would not have space to fight internally.. At least, not while there was the slightest option of reissuing the coalition government. they were wrong.

Belarra's speech at the closing of the campaign, last Friday, caused discomfort, but they chose to remain silent. And it is what they want to continue doing, although they assume that the darts of Podemos will continue. That the purple formation claims its autonomy within the parliamentary group is expected, but other Sumar forces recall that, if they leave the parliamentary group in Congress, they will lose 23% of the resources that correspond to them by the coalition agreement. Coexistence, they understand, is necessary for the left. And Podemos argues that it demands exactly the same as Compromís or the commons, which in the last legislature enjoyed freedom to vote on an issue as sensitive as the PSOE bill to prohibit prostitution and reinforce the punishment of whoremongers.

Díaz, who is not used to responding publicly on internal issues, gave Podemos the data of the “million votes” achieved, together with the IU, on March 28, in response to his criticism for having gone back to three million voters.. Such a forceful public response is not remembered, even after several cross-examinations in an interview in La Sexta, since Belarra claimed to continue negotiating the coalition agreement, at the beginning of June, when he also denounced that it did not guarantee the representativeness of Podemos.

On Wednesday, at his farewell as parliamentary spokesman for United We Can in the Lower House, Pablo Echenique, who will return to his position at the CSIC, declared himself “proud to have made a lot of noise”. It is precisely that noise, also their way of revealing internal fights, what they want to avoid in Sumar. Today they assume that they have it difficult, and choose to ignore them.