At long last, there is some ray of light in the politics of Spain as the fifteen political parties belonging to all shades including green and the extreme Left entered into a historic agreement to jointly fight the right wing parties including the far right VoX in the crucial national elections on July 23.The credit goes to the Spanish communist leader and the deputy prime minister Yolanda Diaz who made it possible through her new platform Sumar(Unite) through her ceaseless efforts for bringing unity of the entire Left to capture power by defeating the Right.
However, some, some leaders of Podemos, one of the biggest contingents of the Left were not happy as Diaz took a tough position while finalizing the electoral list by excluding some important leaders from the list including Podemos deputy leader Irene Monteno. Diaz is the most popular leader of the Left in Spain and her decision on the electoral list by excluding the discredited leaders of the Podemos, got wide acceptance by the Front partners. The Spanish communist leader made it clear that her list was the winning list and the Front should exclude those who fared badly in the May elections.
On June 9 afternoon, just hours before the midnight deadline to register the electoral coalition was set to pass, Podemos’s current leader Ione Belarra called a press conference in which she announced that her party would sign up to Sumar “without an [acceptable] agreement” because of “the threat” to otherwise be excluded from the joint lists. “I am saddened that Yolanda Díaz is proposing that the agreement between Sumar and Podemos be built on the exclusion of a colleague [Irene Montero] who has been the architect of a generation of feminist rights [in her role as equality minister],” Belarra added.
While Díaz and Montero had a poor working relationship and the Podemos number two made many enemies during recent years of splits and infighting on the Spanish left, her exclusion largely came down to a highly damaging controversy around the implementation of a new sexual consent law, which has seen hundreds of convicted rapists have their sentences reduced unintentionally. From Díaz’s perspective, Montero had become a liability that would have distracted from a campaign she wants to centre on her record as labour minister, as well as on Sumar’s program for a new social democratic project based on workers’ rights and social protection.
Under the joint electoral lists, Podemos has been reserved eight relatively safe seats, including fifth in the Madrid list for Belarra, fourth in Barcelona for its head of organization, Lilith Verstrynge, and first in Álava, Granada, Gipuzkoa, Las Palmas, Murcia, and Navarre. Díaz will top the symbolically important Madrid list, followed by Spain’s current United Nations ambassador, Agustín Santos Maraver, and two Más Madrid representatives in third and fourth place: the Spanish-Sahrawi activist Tesh Sidi and party founder Íñigo Errejón. The Communist-led Izquierda Unida, which has provided a significant part of the initial organizational muscle for Sumar, has received first place in the lists for the southern regions of Córdoba and Málaga, as well as in Tarragona, and second in Seville and third in Valencia.
Diaz was very confident of the Front’s electoral list. In fact, the list has got wide approval nationwide. She has asked all Sumar partners to start vigorous campaign for the national polls on the basis of the social justice programme. Diaz holds the labour portfolio and she has introduced many pro labour measures during her tenure to the satisfaction of the Spanish trade unions. A latest opinion poll of El Pais newspaper shows that there is a good possibility of the Left Front forming a progressive alliance government with Pedro Sanchez’s centre left Socialist Workers Party (PSOE).
Sergio Pascual, Podemos’s former head of organization, is also happy at the formation of the joint front to fight the July 23 elections. Otherwise, he says, the alternative is a hard-right, Popular Party (PP)–Vox government, which threatens democratic regression in Spain. Yet, , Pascual maintains that faced with such a threat, the Left must also be able to offer a positive vision for a new Spain, based on social justice and a new state interventionism.
According to the Podemos leader, beyond this immediate fallout, the agreement institutes a new balance between the distinct sensibilities that coexist on the Spanish left. Within this political space you have various nationalist and regional left formations (such as [Coalició] Compromís in Valencia, Más Madrid in the capital, or Los Comunes in Catalonia), the Eurocommunist left of Izquierda Unida, with its trade union tradition and revindication of labor struggles; a post-materialist left represented by Íñigo Errejón; and a combative, antiestablishment left represented by Podemos.
The Sumar agreement explicitly recognizes the pluralism of these distinct currents. It also looks to better represent their competing weight in the current political moment, which is quite distinct to that of eight years ago when Podemos made its initial breakthrough. In 2015, its combative rhetoric chimed with the times, and its hegemony was universally accepted. But in the post-pandemic moment, people are demanding greater certainty and a politics that offer solutions to their material concerns — which Yolanda’s distinct leadership style much better embodies.
Yet, in reality, Sumar’s success as a new political actor will not only be measured by its electoral result next month but also by its ability to then construct solid institutional structures going forward. It remains to be seen if it can outlast the current electoral cycle or if this coalition will simply implode at the first major setback. That’s the wider task for those who are in charge of Sumar: to make sure that this electoral agreement is not just an electoral agreement but becomes the basis to build a left-wing organization that can survive the highs and lows of electoral pressures and can institute greater internal democracy.
Right now, five weeks before the national elections, all focus is on the election campaign. There is a new enthusiasm and vigour in sight among the left supporters. The feeling has gained ground that the Left is winning and a real progressive coalition will be possible with PSOE on the basis of a solid pro- people programme. Just like Podemos founder Pablo Iglesias ignited the expectations of the Spanish youth eight years ago, Yalando Diaz, the most admired leader of the Spanish Communist Party is leading the Sumar campaign. She is emerging as the Prime Minister alternative in the minds of the Spanish people. Much will depend on the outcome of the July 23 election. (IPA Service)
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