Anyone would say that the tragic Andalusian experience would have taught the left lessons and that the mistakes made will not be repeated. And speaking with the protagonists, the lesson has been learned, but everything indicates, and they also admit it, that the mistakes –division, absence of leadership, obvious fights for the lists...– are not only going to be repeated but very likely they will multiply. Both in the PSOE, with its discreet leadership, and, above all, in the so-called space for change.
If in Andalusia the struggle for unity was only partially successful, with the consolidation of the schism of Teresa Rodríguez and a list of people fighting called Por Andalucía, next year's municipal and regional elections are much worse. Both in the process and in the foreseeable results. The Sumar platform is not going to participate in the elections –for now, it is an association, it has no form of political organization–, since Vice President Yolanda Díaz had already announced months ago that her project was only state-owned. And the political forces that it intends to bring together in the general elections are mired in a fratricidal war in almost all the territories. In short: to this day Sumar is not going to be there and those who are going to be there are not yet to be added.
The autonomous ones are celebrated in 12 communities –Aragón, Asturias, Illes Balears, Canarias, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Comunidad Valenciana, Extremadura, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia and Navarra–, and in the cities of Ceuta and Melilla. In each territory the problems are different, but the general summary is that Podemos bases and cadres and IU bases and cadres, which have always had complicated relationships, are out to kill. Until 2020, that tension was resolved by power: the indisputable capacity of Podemos as a locomotive of space and the leadership of Pablo Iglesias forced IU and the rest to assume the hegemony of the purples. But as the fraying of Podemos in the territories has become more evident, the allied formations have questioned who should lead the lists and the strategy. Today, in the previous scores, Podemos argues that the correlation of forces to negotiate must be that of 2019, but in IU nobody buys that story.
Both in the elections of Castilla y León and in those of Andalusia, IU and Podemos concurred together. In the first case, with the score and baton of Podemos, with Pablo Fernández, and in the second, under the leadership and strategy of IU, with Inma Nieto. The two campaigns went badly in terms of results – fueled by the poor performance of the respective socialist candidates, Luis Tudanca and Juan Espadas, and by the discreet debut of the anti-capitalist operation in Andalusia – which suggests that Podemos and IU, with nuances in each territory, they are tense, not in a correlation of forces, but "in a correlation of weaknesses", according to the famous quote by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán about the transition.
The atmosphere is generally one of suspicion, and Yolanda Díaz, after the experiences of Castilla y León, and Andalusia – where she was consulted – does not want to get involved with sickles and kicks to put order there. To this day, only in Extremadura and Navarra the relations between both formations allow us to dream of a joint candidacy in the autonomous communities. In the rest of the territories, things are very bad, not only between IU and Podemos but also among the purple cadres, where fringes of the internal struggles that shook the organization in the previous period are still visible. As in Asturias, where the current regional leadership, led by Sofía Castañón, processes an expulsion file for the previous general secretary, Daniel Ripa, and the relationship with IU is also very damaged.
Podemos does not have an organization for the municipal ones, except in the big cities, and in most of these an alliance with the IU is not viable. The two most complicated places will be, both regional and municipal, Madrid and the Valencian Community. In the first case, the options of the space to conquer the community are real, with the PSOE in disarray, Más Madrid leading the opposition and United We Can, greatly diminished and willing, a priori, to join a list of Mónica García. But the candidate for Más Madrid does not want a soup of acronyms and Podemos is looking for a candidate. Also in the City Council, where Podemos did not attend in 2019. Y Más Madrid, after the Carmenista schism, will defend the foreseeable candidacy of Rita Maestre and could achieve an alliance with IU, since IU Madrid has already threatened to join Errejón in 2019. I could do it now, in the community and in the town hall.
In the Valencian Community, the puzzle on the left is one of 10,000 pieces: a force entrenched in the territory like Compromís, a Podemos diminished by its internal struggles and the departure of some of its well-known faces, such as the former regional vice president Rubén Martínez Dalmau, a small errejonista sector but allied to Compromís, and IU, integrated into United We Can.
Only Barcelona City Hall looks like a raft today. Ada Colau's candidacy has no rivals in the political space and it is unlikely that other lists will emerge.
Straightening out this general picture without powerful leadership seems impossible. The paradox is that the actors know that this situation harms them in global terms. However, they seem willing to fight to determine who is the most powerful organization in space, even at the risk of weakening all of them. The PSOE or the territorial forces (Bildu, BNG, Compromís) could take advantage of the circumstance to gain a foothold at their expense. As for Sumar, a severe defeat of the space is very bad news for Díaz due to his demobilizing power, although on the other hand the debacle could be such that negotiating the general lists would be a piece of cake. Building, yes, from an absolute ruin.
