The political cycle before the summer frustrated the two political hypotheses that Podemos was working with. In May, the attempt to save institutional representation through the alliance with IU in more territories than ever did not work and, with few exceptions, the lilacs remained camped outside the walls of regional parliaments and council houses, sleeping on the ground . In July, the omens of the purple leadership also failed, which foreshadowed the end of the coalition government if Podemos did not occupy a central and leading role in the broad front led by Yolanda Díaz, a leading role that Sumar was never willing to cede to them . Spain broke the European cycle of the triumph of the right and this destroyed the hypotheses with which Podemos worked, both in the political organization and in its media arm, Canal Red, the centrality of which it depended to a large extent to become the fiercest battering ram against a PP and Vox executive led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo. We can sail today in rough waters without nautical charts, with a damaged ship and trying to rework our short-term strategy to continue to exist.
In view of this unexpected scenario, the general secretary, Ione Belarra, has set as the objective of the investiture of Pedro Sánchez that Irene Montero retain the ministerial portfolio of Equality, a possibility discarded by the PSOE and communicated to the political space immediately after the elections. The Socialists then offered to look for an institutional alternative to Irene Montero, but Podemos roundly refused and continues to bet on the repetition of Montero at the head of a portfolio that not a few in the PSOE long to recover for the Socialists, after the uneventful end of the legislature, with an open confrontation between the ministries of Justice and Equality regarding the reform of the so-called law of only yes is yes.
The moral authority resulting from the flogging suffered by Montero over the last three years is the flag that Podemos waves to keep its bases and supporters firm in the midst of a constant trickle of exits from the party’s executive, the latest, the one that she was a candidate for the presidency of the Community of Madrid, Alejandra Jacinto, who this week announced her resignation from the organic positions. Two weeks earlier, the general secretary in Asturias, ex-deputy Sofía Castañón, resigned, and five days ago the coordinator in the Balearic Islands, Antònia Jover, did the same, leaving the organization in the hands of a manager until the citizen assembly The guidelines are clear and the phrase “strengthening process” is repeated in all territories.
Belarra gathered its autonomous bases yesterday in Madrid to begin a process of collective reflection, explained its spokeswoman, Isa Serra, which must lead to “strengthening”, after the aggressive and forced ERO that the party have to face and that included the closure of most of its autonomous offices. “It is a process of strengthening, of organizational reflection, to take our project further, strengthen it and continue to advance social rights that are fundamental to making our country more democratic”, explained Serra at the beginning of the day. The day served to calm the waters, after the departure of Jacinto and the tensions between the state leadership and the mayoral candidate, Roberto Sotomayor. As an addendum to yesterday’s meeting, today the party’s number two, Irene Montero, travels to Extremadura, the only territory where the political space, Unides per Extremadura, led by the member of Podem Irene de Miguel, achieved improve their 2019 results.
The meeting of the state leadership with the different territories has been demanded for weeks by Covadonga Tomé, deputy to the General Assembly of the Principality and the only regional elected position of Podem in Asturias. Tomé’s relations with the management of Podem Astúries are practically broken since he prevailed in the primaries over the candidate promoted by the management, Alba González, secretary of the organization of the party. To resolve this situation, the regional representative had demanded a meeting with the general secretary in such a tense atmosphere that, in the recent visits to Asturias by members of the state leadership, such as Belarra herself or Minister Montero, Tomé was not summoned to participate in the events.
Podemos is focused on itself, on the reformulation of its project, but there are no vertebrate critical currents to dispute the control of the party with the current leadership. The majority of dissidents have been leaving the formation of their own volition or have been removed from the bridge over the course of the last year. The only critic of the leadership left in the executive is the Secretary of State for Social Rights and leader of the coalition’s negotiating team, Nacho Álvarez, who from Canal Red – which runs the former secretary general and de facto leader of the party, Pablo Iglesias, and from whose editorial board co-founder Juan Carlos Monedero has left – he was accused last week of conspiring with Díaz to occupy a ministry and thus remove Irene Montero from the executive.
These misadventures keep the party and its five deputies almost disconnected from the rest of the organizations in the political space, to the point that yesterday they disagreed with the amnesty proposal of the lawyers summoned by Sumar that Díaz has made known. It is, said Serra, a “proposal only by Yolanda Díaz, we did not know it, in fact we do not know it, and we remain focused on proposals that allow our country to continue advancing in social and democratic rights”.
Podemos, with an operation that has split into two executive bodies – the official one and another informal one where suspected dissidents are not summoned – has entered into a process of quartering in order to survive the winter and, according to several sources, assess in the spring the possibility of appearing alone at the Europeans in 2024. With Irene Montero as head of the list.
