The mathematical sign of addition accompanied by different lemmas such as Dialogue, Listen or Modernize in multiple equations. This is the corporate image of Sumar, the new political project led by Yolanda Díaz.
It has been the second vice president herself who has revealed it on social networks to highlight that it is “an exciting day” because Sumar begins “his path”. And in just one week, next Friday, July 8, she will open the process of listening to society with a public event at the Matadero cultural space in Madrid.
The Sumar platform also has an official Twitter account and proclaims that it aspires to “build the future together” that they want for Spain. And it includes a video with images of the head of Labor and other slogans of the process, which evoke the need to modernize the country, increase the care and protection of people, unity and the illusion of a common project and delve into freedoms and rights.
After a few days away from the spotlight, taking advantage of her non-participation in the NATO summit, Díaz has worked together with her closest team of collaborators to finish shaping the project. This launch event for ‘Sumar’ coincides with the celebration of LGTBi Pride, and with which Díaz wants to gather proposals from experts and groups for this new progressive project, with a horizon for the next decade.
In this way, he has emphasized that the leading role must fall on society and that the parties, although essential, must have a secondary role.
This presentation in society coincides with a change of cycle within the Government after the Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón, announced yesterday the foreseeable vote against the ministers of Podemos to the agreement for the expansion of the Rota base to be able to house two new destroyers.
Garzón’s warning, which literally said that the purple ministers “will also vote against”, advances what clearly seems to be the most significant gap within the Executive of Pedro Sánchez and anticipates the next debate that will open with the negotiation of next year’s budgets in which the President of the Government expects to see an increase in State spending on defense. An option that United We Can is determined to fight.
The anti-war tradition of the left revives an old debate that evokes the split in the Spanish left around the 1986 NATO referendum. The recent pact signed by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and his American counterpart, Joe Biden, on the use of the Rota base substantially modifies the Defense Cooperation Agreement between the United States and Spain signed in 1988. To the point of requiring a vote in the Congress of Deputies.
The United We Can parliamentary group has already announced that it will vote against expanding the facilities. And they justify it by denouncing from intermediate cadres “the unilateralism with which Pedro Sánchez has maneuvered with Joe Biden to the point of taking the agreement for granted.”
What is new is that the purple ministers, as the head of Consumption announced yesterday, will also vote against, which raises the category of the disagreements between the two parties that, to date, had been confined to lower levels.
It remains to be seen what position the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, will adopt. It seems unlikely that she will be left out of the theses of United We Can. The second vice president has remained in a very discreet background throughout these days in which the NATO summit has overwhelmed the agenda of Spanish politics. Her voice has not been heard to speak out for or against. Although next Friday’s presentation certifies that the countdown to the end of the coalition has already been activated.
In any case, it will be from July 8 when Díaz leads a tour with which he intends to cover “all of Spain” through meetings with sectoral experts, groups and other sectors of the country, understanding that it is the best way to end disaffection of the policy it detects in the probes.
Sumar bets in its statutes to “promote and strengthen” civil society participation in politics to “improve democratic quality and human development.” In addition, it intends to promote, among its goals, “democratic commitment and the participation of citizens in public life”, in addition to “contributing to the development of critical thinking”.
This phase of the consultation with civil society will last approximately six months and Díaz herself explained that, once it is over, she will make a decision on whether she will be a candidate for the next general elections, something that will be done collectively and in any case through a primary process.
The vice president has also stressed that the project has a transversal vocation and is not limited to the left of the PSOE, a space that she came to define as “small” and “marginal”.
