Podemos continues to prepare the break with Sumar and with the PSOE since the grievance, and yesterday the outgoing minister Ione Belarra, general secretary of Podemos, called the press to the courtyard of the Congress during the intervention of the PNB spokesman, Aitor Esteban, to reiterate the his claim to the elected president, Pedro Sánchez, of the ministerial portfolio of Equality for Irene Montero.
Belarra, who has resigned from her own ministry months ago and has focused her political action on demanding the continuity of Montero in Equality, assured the press that the leader of Sumar despises her and "hasn't called me since July". Podemos demanded a direct dialogue with the PSOE immediately after the elections, aside from Sumar, and even put on the table in August a list of conditions to support Pedro Sánchez in the investiture. No one from the PSOE, nor from Moncloa, has contacted Podemos since August to accept, reject or at least not discuss these conditions, despite the fact that the party's management asked those registered to vote in in favor of Sánchez's investiture in the case consultation.
Both Belarra and the tutor of the current executive, Pablo Iglesias, consider that the absence of ministers with a Podemos card and, in particular, the absence of Irene Montero in the Council of Ministers, constitutes an affront to the party and so have expressed on repeated occasions.
This grievance operates as a moral justification for deploying the party's new road map, described in the political report submitted to the grassroots last week, an initiative that has allowed the leadership to bypass a state citizens' assembly to elect a new executive, and which it prefigures the conditions for Podemos to emancipate itself from the discipline of the multi-national parliamentary group of Sumar. Podemos' plans are to run without Sumar in the elections, and for this it cultivates the friendship of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, which could facilitate an alliance for the European elections. It is not clear, in any case, that the well-known weakness of Gabriel Rufián for Pablo Iglesias - and his dislike for Vice President Yolanda Díaz - is shared by the party's executive, however, the parliamentary spokesman of the Republicans made an invitation on Wednesday to the Podemos ministers to "come together".
The possible conversion of the five acts of deputies of Podemos into a free verse in the government coalition upsets the PSOE and generates contradictory feelings in Sumar. On the one hand, and after the behavior of the deputies of Podemos during the last two years in the Unides Podemos group, in which they decided to act on their own and apart from the confederal bodies, the political formations gathered in Sumar - in particular the victims of this way of proceeding: the commons, IU and the PCE – want an urgent divorce as a lesser evil, while others are betting on trying to dissolve them within Sumar.
The management of Podemos, under the supervision of ex-vice president Iglesias, has decided to measure forces with Sumar in the European elections of 2024, but for this it needs to make its own voice visible in Congress, something that within Sumar's multinational group is prohibited and that, without controlling any ministry, it is an impossible undertaking. This is the incentive to abandon the discipline of the parliamentary group and seek an alliance with others – which could be the republican group, if Rufián convinces the leadership of his party – or to integrate into the mixed group with his five deputies, which would give them control of interventions and resources, since right now there are only three deputies in the mixed group: from the BNG, from the UPN, and from the Canarian Coalition.
If the ministries of MEPs Ernest Urtasun and Sira Rego are confirmed, the Unides Podemos Eurogroup list would run and two Podemos MEPs would enter, which means they would take control of the delegation's resources. This would give room for maneuver to those of Iglesias, besieged by economic difficulties after the defeat of May 28. In that battle for resources, it will be decided whether Podemos respects the July agreements or seeks life on its own.
