Podemos is trying to rebuild itself in the new term with the Citizen Assembly on the horizon

Last year was the most complicated in the ten years of Podemos’ life. With four deputies in Congress, without institutional power after the government left in November and relegated to the Mixed Group after breaking the coalition they had signed in the summer to go with Sumar to the elections. The party won two MEPs in the June elections and with Yolanda Díaz’s coalition in decline, it is experiencing a slight recovery in the polls. Aware that its deputies in the Lower House are key for the government to be able to pass any law, they warn that their support will be conditional on social progress being made during the legislature.

Podemos is now starting the new year with its eyes set on the horizon of June, when a new Citizen Assembly is scheduled by statutes, the fifth of the party since its birth. The party still has to resolve the renewal of leadership in some territories, something that is expected to happen before the end of the year. Euskadi, Extremadura, Andalusia, Galicia, Castilla-La Mancha and La Rioja will hold assemblies in the coming months.

Last year’s election campaigns in Galicia, the Basque Country and the European elections served to define a discourse and strategy different from Sumar. Although the party did poorly in the first two elections and was left without representation, on 9J, with Irene Montero as a candidate, it won two seats that redefined the political space of the left that emerged from the general elections a year earlier.

Montero campaigned on her left-wing profile, with speeches against the war in Gaza and Ukraine and with the banners of feminism and LGBT rights that she promoted during her time at the Ministry of Equality. “The left has to stand up” is the slogan that hovered over her campaign and has been repeated ever since.

“Podemos is starting the political year with strength, energy and the full conviction that it is possible to reestablish a truly transformative left in Spain that resolves the problems of citizens, such as the extremely high cost of housing, and promotes courageous feminist, anti-racist and ecological policies,” say sources from the party.

Since the summer, the party has considered the “progressive legislature” to be a dead end. The decisive point, they maintain, was the agreement sealed by the PSOE and the PP to renew the General Council of the Judiciary after more than five years of blockage. An agreement that, according to its leaders, buries the possibilities of a true democratic regeneration like the one promised by Pedro Sánchez after the five days of reflection he took in May in response to the news that affected his partner, Begoña Gómez.

“This appointment [el de Isabel Perelló como presidenta del CGPJ] It is a kind of facelift, but nothing will really change because the PP will continue to control the PJ and will block all progressive decisions that can be taken,” said the party’s Secretary of Organization, Pablo Fernández, on Wednesday in an interview on Radiocable in which he criticized a PSOE that, he said, has “taken the right lane and will not let go.”

For Podemos, “it is evident” that the PSOE “has given up on any “transformation” and that “its commitment is to conservative policies that bring it closer to the PP than to the majority that invested Pedro Sánchez as president a year ago.” “The agreement for the CGPJ that legitimizes the judicial dirty war or its proposal on immigration matters are good examples of this,” they maintain.

The party will try to take advantage of its four deputies in Congress, and this explains why in January they rejected the decree with which the Government sought to promote the reform of unemployment benefits and which, according to Ione Belarra’s party, contained a cut. They also did so in the last plenary session in July, with the decree that the Executive brought to renew the anti-crisis shield, the package of measures to alleviate the economic effects of the war in Ukraine. At that time, Podemos obtained a commitment from the PSOE not to cut the social electricity bonus that implies a discount on the electricity bill for vulnerable consumers.

According to party sources, the commitment to diplomacy and peace in Gaza and Ukraine will continue to be important axes of the party’s discourse, even more so with the presence of its political secretary, Irene Montero, in the European Parliament. There, the party has just materialised its alliance with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise and the Portuguese Bloco de Esquerdas in a new political party, together with other European formations, in a move to distance itself from the traditional left represented by the European Left Party (ELP), the European Alliance of the Left for the People and the Planet.

A new Citizen Assembly on the horizon

But Podemos’ most urgent task is to reorganise itself internally. After the split with Sumar, it activated a process of leadership renewal in its main territories. Belarra promoted the candidacies of people close to the leadership to control the apparatus in Madrid, with Isa Serra, the Valencian Community, with María Teresa Pérez, or Murcia, with Javier Sánchez Serna.

At the beginning of the year, the party began a process of primaries to renew the leadership in almost half of the territories, those in which the current mandates expired by statutes but also the territories in which resignations occurred in recent months or which have been facing internal crises for some time: Madrid, Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Aragon, Asturias, Murcia and the Canary Islands will face primaries in the coming months.

Now, he plans to do the same with another group of territories. Euskadi, Extremadura, Andalusia, Galicia, Castilla-La Mancha and La Rioja will hold regional primaries, in principle before the end of the year, to elect their new coordinators. This is the second process of renewal of territorial leadership that Pablo Fernández faces as Secretary of Organisation, a position he assumed after the surprise departure of Lilith Verstrynge from the party.

Along with the organic articulation, Podemos will also update its ideological theses for the new stage of the left this year. A process that will continue with the political conference that it held approximately a year ago, with the approval of a document to justify its break with Sumar, and which will have its first step in the short term with the Autumn University, on October 19 and 20.

But the most important event in this regard will be the Citizens’ Assembly, the fifth in the history of the party, which according to the statutes must be held no later than four years after the previous one. This deadline will expire in the summer and although in recent months there had been speculation about a possible early meeting, it seems that the dates will be maintained. At this assembly Podemos will renew its governing bodies and approve new political, organisational and ethical documents, as well as updated statutes.

The last assembly promoted Ione Belarra to the position of General Secretary, replacing Pablo Iglesias, who had officially left politics a few months earlier. Four years later, the situation of the party has changed completely. The continuous resignations of leaders in the last stage have weakened the party but have also left Belarra without any apparent internal response to renew her position as leader of the party. Although until then there is a whole year left in the tumultuous Spanish political arena.