"Podemos is not dead." It is the message repeated ad nauseam at the Autumn University of the party, which this year, with the exception of the international guests, has been held inward, with a patent absence of figures from the left located beyond the strict limits of the militant card. And with former Vice President Pablo Iglesias revived, at the helm. The absence of the current secretary general, Ione Belarra, due to her maternity leave, allowed her predecessor to take the helm of the speech.
Podemos therefore spoke at this annual meeting with himself and about himself, and closed his days of debate by questioning Yolanda Díaz and her Sumar initiative, in the mouth of Pablo Iglesias himself: “Podemos must be respected (...) Woe to that or the one that dares to disrespect the militants of Podemos”. Iglesias, without expressly mentioning it, attributed the "stupid" plan of thinking that the municipal and regional elections will clarify the weight of each one in the space -in fact, he spoke of the dream that these elections could destroy Podemos- and therefore they will later facilitate the incardination of Sumar as a candidacy for generals in a space without command.
Thus, he admitted that his initial forecast of an electoral advance dictated by Pedro Sánchez, whose haste would facilitate the negotiation with Díaz so that Podemos would be the flagship of his political platform, does not seem to be fulfilled and today the May appointment stands as a disastrous scenario for the party – dilapidated in the territories since 2019 – and for all the space that could weaken it to the extreme, even before Díaz sat down to prepare his candidacy for the left.
The battle that almost broke out with the negotiation of the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary – in which maneuvers and threats took place within the political space – and which was avoided by the capitulation of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is served today. In the short term, it will not affect the Council of Ministers, since any temptation to leave the executive has been vaccinated by the current situation of Junts after leaving the Generalitat. But the return of Iglesias to the party rally wants to send a message to his militancy and to all the other actors in the political space: Podemos must be respected, Podemos is not dead and is not willing to be sidelined in the coming process.
Their positions repeated it in the speeches and on social networks, providing as evidence the fullness of the acts on Saturday and Sunday, and their municipal and regional candidates repeated it at tables in which they agreed with each other. "It's us, only us" was the rhetoric of political identity that was heard until it became the music of the Autumn University, leading to the central act of the weekend: the talk on Saturday about lawfare and mediafare that was opened by the prestigious magistrate emeritus of the Supreme Court José Antonio Martín Pallín, and in which the main course, under the auspices of the former secretary general, Pablo Iglesias, was the intervention of the now Government delegate for Gender Violence, Victoria Rosell. The judge, who obtained the conviction of Santiago Alba by proving the prevarication, bribery and falsehood incurred in her conspiracy against her to protect the then Minister of Industry, José Manuel Soria. Rosell left in the air the real question of that sentence and of the case: How can the sentence speak of conspiracy and that there is no other conspirator? Where are the Provincial Court, the prosecutor's office, former Minister Soria himself...? With Rosell, Podemos widens its saint list of victims of the dirty game of the State that, in application of the principle of the authority of martyrdom postulated by the philosopher Pascal Brückner, asserted before its militants.
Journalist and writer Raúl Solís, author of The Trans Battle, used to say that the strength of a political organization is measured by being the subject or being preached. In talking about who we are or what we are going to do. And that in 2016, IU was the subject and Podemos was the predicate. This weekend, IU held its conference, New rights, old storms, in which academics and communication experts took the floor. No one talked about IU.
On Saturday, Iglesias made a joke based on a hoax about Yolanda Díaz - who attributes devotion to Felipe González -. The auditorium, filled to overflowing, celebrated the saeta against the vice president with laughter and great applause. The pot on the left is beeping.
