The peace of the negotiations for the eventual integration of Podemos in Sumar, which had been taking place for days with complete discretion, went to waste on Monday night, when former vice president Pablo Iglesias accused En Comú Podemos – that is his organization in Catalonia and, in fact, he is part of the executive and the state citizens’ council – to veto Podem’s entry into Sumar. Rarely does En Comú produce a public response to the tactical movements and leaks of the Podemos leadership, but the last straw must have spilled the beans of the usual internal stoicism of the commons, who yesterday assured, on the one hand, that Iglesias does not know what he is talking about, since he is not in the negotiation, and, on the other hand, he dropped the bombshell that the state management of Podemos had informed them in the last few days that it was playing with two fights before the general elections of 23 July: I was negotiating with Sumar and ERC at the same time.
It took Esquerra just two minutes to categorically deny and ask Podemos and the commons not to use them as a bargaining chip in the internal struggle for the Sumar space. The commons, in the face of ERC’s refusal, confirmed that it was the literal warning from the state management of Podemos – in fact, from the top itself – and showed surprise at the double game of Ione Belarra’s, considering that ERC is the natural rival of the commons and Podemos.
From the silence of Podemos in the face of the revelation, which did not open its mouth in the face of the successive statements of the commons and of Esquerra, it can be deduced that the warning of having a second suitor for the general elections could have been a pressure mechanism of the lilacs in a negotiation that seems destined for another agonizing end.
The fact is that the threat of Podemos sounded plausible, since, from the discreet contacts of the management of Podemos with Esquerra in January 2022 fueling the distrust of the republicans towards the labor reform promoted by the vice-president of the Government and leader of the ‘space of Unides Podemos’ to the executive, Yolanda DÃaz, there was such closeness that, when ERC voted, with Bildu, against the partial reform of the gag law promoted by the PSOE and Unides Podemos and it fell, the secretary general of the lilacs, the Minister of Social Rights Ione Belarra, publicly expressed the proximity to the pro-independence formations and the contempt for the reform text that her own deputies had managed to agree with the socialist group and the PNB.
The rumor of an eventual move by Podemos for an alliance with ERC and EH Bildu that would compete against Yolanda DÃaz’s platform has been deliberately fueled from the top of Podemos with insistence in the last year, which has brought abertzales and Republicans to categorically deny it several times. The almost total absence of Podemos leaders in Ada Colau’s campaign and the frequency with which Iglesias and Montero were seen in the company of ERC leaders in those days have fueled this double game. Coincidence or intentional coincidence, the private visit, last weekend, of Pablo Iglesias to Catalonia, a trip whose agenda has not transpired, has served to give more plausibility to the threat of an eventual change of partner dance by Podemos, so that they would leave the commons in the lurch.
Those around Yolanda DÃaz avoided commenting on the real or pretend double game of Podemos and, in fact, they were aware of the movement of the commons when it occurred. In any case, the Sumar team maintained maximum discretion yesterday about the terms being discussed in the agreement with Podemos, whose dialogue continues and, although it is admitted that all the noise from the intervention of Iglesias at Cadena Ser does not help to clarify the negotiation for the possible incorporation of Sumar – which has 48 hours left to be resolved – does not mean that the parties have decided to leave the table.
From the outside, and while the terms of a possible agreement are transpiring, the difficult fitting of the pieces of a dismembered left today seems to be overwhelmed by the deceptions of the conjurers and missing the trace of the jugglers.
