It shouldn't happen, everyone has numbers on the table indicating that it is electoral suicide. And yet, as in the fable of the scorpion and the frog, it is beginning to be glimpsed that what is left of Podemos –what is left after the municipal and autonomic ones– will face all the lefts that it once brought together and led. Or maybe it's just that it looks like it; a good bluff can be a winning play that deceives the rest. But Podemos, let it be known, has never bluffed.
The purple party wants a pre-nuptial contract with Yolanda Díaz before the municipal elections and wants the vice president to campaign in favor of United We Can and against the rest of Sumar's possible allies in places as delicate as Madrid and Valencia. The party executive demanded from Díaz, through the mouth of Javier Sánchez Serna, an agreement prior to the municipal “coalition between Sumar and Podemos”. If you don't sign on the dotted line, they won't attend your imminent debut. It had been months since the leadership of Podemos had not referred to Sumar as the "political party" that it is not and that it had not alluded to that kind of "bilateralism". There will be no such prior agreement, of course, because Díaz's electoral platform is not a party and cannot sign in such terms regarding lists and money -which is the only thing that is discussed here-, but Podemos does not go to the party table that IU proposed so that all the formations that aspire to participate in Sumar join forces.
The final negotiations of the reform of the gag law showed that the confederal parliamentary group of United We Can is broken and there is no longer any effort to hide it. A little over a year ago, the same thing happened with the labor reform: while IU and Comunes tried to get Esquerra into the pact, or at least wrest an abstention from him, the leadership of Podemos sent messages of encouragement to the Catalan republicans. That the Madrid leadership of Podemos likes the Republicans of Oriol Junqueras more than the common ones of Ada Colau is not a secret, but a year ago they not only hid it but even flew into a rage if the press insinuated such a thing. This week, on the other hand, Ione Belarra, minister and general secretary of Podemos, publicly blamed the PSOE – which voted together with Unidas Podemos and the PNV – for the ERC and EH Bildu condemning the processing of the law. no holds barred Enrique Santiago, leader of the negotiation for Podemos – and one of the mediators to avoid the rupture – publicly reprimanded the former leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, for applauding the all or nothing of Republicans and Abertzales.
And there, things are even more delicate because the sentimental tears of the cainita 2016-2019 phase still fester in the leadership of the party. The embrace of Alberto Rodríguez from the Canary Islands – in charge of his Proyecto Drago – with Íñigo Errejón caused more than just gnashing of teeth on the top floor of Francisco Villaespesa 18, not to mention the event on mental health that Errejón and Díaz shared last Friday.
The sharing forums are blinding. Podemos protested a year ago against Díaz's lack of activity in the confederal coordination, but now he drags his feet to attend meetings or sends seconds without the ability to decide. In space, some say the battle is lost. They believe that Podemos has already decided that everything burns. Podemos asks for respect for his trajectory and sacrifice, from the patriotism of the initials. The purple ones believe that all of them, starting with Sumar, are their split. Dissidents, traitors; what Cayo Lara always said about Podemos, that they were a split from the IU and that they owed respect to their history, their sacrifice. Podemos was born with circles and makes them.
