Sumar is already working on its structure as a political organization, with the ambition of creating a versatile political device for future electoral events. Galicia and the European elections are the first two events on the calendar that the platform intends to attend without Podemos having begun to reorganize its ranks – this week it has announced an ERE for half of its workforce – after the carnage suffered in the May elections and the consequent subordinate role to which the purple formation was forced in the July general elections.
Díaz announced last week that in the autumn Sumar will hold a founding assembly from which some statutes will emerge that will give definitive form to the Sumar Movement, for the moment an electoral device that intends to maintain its status as a party of parties. For what there is still no date, on the other hand, is for the citizen assembly of Podemos, in which the party's general secretary, Ione Belarra, must be held accountable for the results of the purple formation and the risky strategic position of the last months .
The leadership has not yet presented any political presentation to its cadres and militants on what has happened since its boycott, on April 2, of Sumar's debut event at the Magariños sports center in Madrid, until the more than probable revalidation of the government of coalition, for which the purples have lost their role as leaders of the political space. In between, the municipal and regional elections in May turned Podemos into an organization without institutional representation in a large part of the territory, giving the IU a clear hegemony on the left side of the political arc in municipalities and autonomous communities.
Since the election night of July 23, Podemos – which has obtained five deputy certificates integrated into Sumar's candidacy – has adopted a fully identity discourse, which it had premiered at the Autumn University of 2022. Thus, barely ten hours after the electoral count, Belarra attributed to the scant role of Podemos in the electoral campaign the loss of votes in the space compared to 2019 and, from that day, claimed political autonomy within the Sumar parliamentary group, beginning with the negotiation of the coalition government with the PSOE .
The former parliamentary spokesman for Podemos, Pablo Echenique, through the party's communication platform, Canal Red, made official the speech of Podemos, which describes itself as the "partisan and transformative left" and defines all the other allies - from IU to Compromís, passing through the commons and Más País– as the “centrist and transactional left”. But Echenique's text goes further and abjures the alliance with Sumar beyond its electoral usefulness -Podemos managed to gain 23% of the resources of the parliamentary group in its integration agreement in Sumar- and expresses Podemos's refusal to dissolve within the platform of Yolanda Díaz.
The determination of the leadership of Podemos is total with respect to preserving a strong and irredeemable identity in the parliamentary group, but it is difficult for this to have a translation in the government's negotiations. The PSOE, as it did with Pablo Iglesias in 2019, intends to negotiate with a single interlocutor, in this case Yolanda Díaz, which is why the acting vice president has contacted all the coalition parties to express their aspirations regarding a coalition of government. Meanwhile, in Podemos two currents coexist today: on the one hand, the state leadership, around the ministers Ione Belarra and Irene Montero, with the support of the Murcian leadership and what remains of the decimated Andalusian organization. On the other, the rest of the territories, more inclined to accelerate the integration of Podemos in Sumar, if not, directly, its dissolution.
The state of the relations between Podemos and the rest of Sumar's allies will begin to be staged on August 16, when Díaz will gather the parliamentary group to prepare the constitution of the Chamber, which is convened for 24 hours later. That day the unknown will begin to be cleared up about how much Belarra is willing to tighten the string of the legislature so that Podemos can wield its own identity in the future.
