Sumar is already working on its structuring as a political organization, with the ambition of creating a versatile political artifact for future electoral dates. Galicia and the European elections are the first two appointments on the calendar that the platform intends to attend without Podemos having begun to reorganize its ranks – this same week it announced an ERO for half of its workforce -, after the patacada of the elections in May and the consequent subaltern role that was forced to assume the purple formation in the general elections in July.
Yolanda Díaz announced last week that in the autumn Sumar will hold a founding assembly from which statutes will emerge that will give Moviment Sumar its final shape, for now an electoral artifact that aims to maintain its status as a party of parties. For what is still no date, on the other hand, it is for the citizens’ assembly of Podemos, in which the general secretary of the party, Ione Belarra, will have to account for the results of the purple formation and the risky strategic position of the last months The management has not yet presented any political report to its cadres and militants on what has happened since its boycott, on April 2, at the act of laying down Sumar at the Magariños sports center in Madrid, until the more than likely revalidation of the coalition Government, for which the purples have lost their role as leaders in the political space. Meanwhile, the municipal and regional elections in May turned Podemos into an organization without institutional representation in a large part of the territory, and gave IU a clear hegemony on the left side of the political spectrum in municipalities and autonomous communities.
Since the election night of July 23, Podem – which has obtained five acts of deputy integrated into Sumar’s candidacy – has adopted a fully identitarian discourse, which it premiered at the university in the fall of 2022. Thus, just ten hours after the election count, Belarra attributed the loss of votes from the area to 2019 to the small role of Podemos in the electoral campaign, and since that day he has claimed political autonomy within the parliamentary group of Sumar, starting with the negotiation of the coalition government with the PSOE.
Podem’s parliamentary spokesperson Pablo Echenique, through the party’s communication platform, Canal Red, made official the speech of Podemos, which describes itself as the “partisan and transformative left” and defines all other allies – from IU to Compromís, passing through the commons and Més País – as the “centrist and transactional left”. But Echenique’s text goes further, abjuring the alliance with Sumar beyond its electoral utility – Podem managed to obtain 23% of the parliamentary group’s resources in its integration agreement with Sumar – and expresses the Podemos’ refusal to dilute itself within Yolanda Díaz’s platform.
The determination of the leadership of Podemos is total with regard to preserving a strong and irredeemable identity in the parliamentary group, but it is difficult for this to have a translation in the negotiation of the government. The PSOE, as it did with Pablo Iglesias in 2019, intends to negotiate with a single interlocutor, in this case Yolanda Díaz, which is why the acting vice president has contacted all the parties in the coalition to express their aspirations regarding a governing coalition . Meanwhile, two currents coexist in Podemos today: on the one hand, the state leadership, around ministers Ione Belarra and Irene Montero, with the support of the Murcia leadership and what remains of the diminished Andalusian organization. On the other, the rest of the territories, more inclined to accelerate the integration of Podemos en Sumar, or, directly, its dissolution.
The state of relations between Podemos and the rest of Sumar’s allies will begin to be staged on August 16, when Díaz will gather the parliamentary group to prepare the constitution of the Chamber, which is convened the following day. That day will begin to clarify the unknown about how much Belarra is willing to tighten the rope of the legislature so that Podemos can wield its own identity in the future.
