Yolanda Díaz exhibits the support of the comuns in the final stretch of the launch of Sumar

The Vice President of the Government and Minister of Labor organized two events in that territory over the weekend with a first stop on Friday in Tarragona and a great event on Saturday in Barcelona that overwhelmed the capacity of the Auditorium with more than a thousand people waiting outside. according to the organizers. The entire leadership of Catalunya en Comú, the formal name of the space, was seated there: in addition to Colau, it was possible to see the national deputy Jaume Asens, the MEP Ernest Urtasun or the deputy mayors Jordi Martí and Janet Sanz.

“It seems to me that everyone will agree that Barcelona as a city shares a lot with Yolanda Díaz”, started the mayoress of the city. “I mean the fact of achieving many victories by adding and bringing together working and common people,” she added.

Díaz picked up the gauntlet in his speech and put Barcelona as a world reference in “public politics”, got into some issues that mark Catalan politics and finally asked for the vote for the mayoress in the next municipal elections. “We need to add for Ada Colau, if not, we are going to make a mistake,” said Yolanda Díaz, who, as she did last week in Madrid, affirmed that Adding “is the key” to “a progressive decade” in Spain.

The final stretch of the listening process began precisely at that event in the Madrid neighborhood of La Latina in which the main experts dedicated to nurturing ideas for the Sumar program for that “next progressive decade” presented their progress. Díaz synthesized the conclusions and later predicted that “a change of era” is not made “from the corner of the board but from the social majorities, from the centrality.” He also warned that to start the progressive decade it is essential to join forces. “Too many people are missing in Sumar. The important thing is not here. The important thing is out there and all those people are the ones we need to add a lot and add well, ”he said.

Same terminology as the vice president

The project that Díaz is putting together has thus parked the prominence of the parties with the aim of “widening” the space. This strategy is one of the reasons why a gap has opened up with Podemos, which demands respect for its acronyms and believes that the idea on which the vice president works could dilute them. In that struggle, the commons, that maintain a coalition in Catalonia with Podem (En Comú Podem, ECP), with seven seats in the Congress of Deputies and eight in the Parliament, have followed their own strategy, with firm support for Yolanda Díaz as a candidate and Sumar as a tool policy for the general elections at the end of the year.

In the environment of En Comú Podem in Congress, they highlight the good harmony of the leaders of the Catalan space with the vice president and recognize that they are “100% devoted” to the Sumar project, which represents, more than an electoral platform, a ” country project for the next decade”. They use exactly the same words with which Díaz defines the political platform with which he intends not only to reissue the coalition government, but also to change the current correlation of forces on the left.

In this own profile, the communes defend that “a concurrence without Podemos would not make sense” nor that what has been united for years now separates. The Catalan confluence in Congress, led by Jaume Asens, is seen as a kind of glue and link between the Díaz team and Podemos when the positions seem further apart than ever. In the formation of Ione Belarra, they take it for granted that Díaz is setting up his own and differentiated party with which they will have to negotiate to form a coalition, as the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, publicly acknowledged last week in an interview on Cadena SER .

The figure of Coalu is important for several reasons. In the first place, due to the political value represented by the Government of the second most important city in Spain. But also because of the profile of the mayoress herself, an anti-eviction activist who has implemented public policies of reference for the progressive electorate from the City Council. Finally, because with the exception of kichiin Cádiz, who has already announced that she will not stand for re-election, is one of the few mayors of the change who maintains power in her city and aspires to renew it.

The connection transcends the relationship with Colau

In the environment of the vice president they concede that the relationship with the space led by the mayoress is “very good”, but they clarify that in the conformation of the listening process there is no preference and the negotiations to structure these acts in the different territories for which that Sumar’s tour has passed, equal treatment is being given to all the political forces that make up the political spectrum to the left of the Socialist Party.

The closeness between Díaz and Colau is undeniable from a political and also a personal point of view, as was seen this weekend at the event in Barcelona, ​​but the connection between the minister’s team and the communes transcends the figure of the mayoress. Although her appointment was not the result of a political alliance but of personal harmony and in the way of working, in May 2021 the minister signed Josep Vendrell, deputy in 2015 of En Comú Podem, as chief of staff (as part of Iniciativa per Catalunya) and, as of 2019, coordinator of the ECP parliamentary group in Parliament. Rodrigo Amírola is also on her team, who was Jessica Albiach’s chief of staff for years, now spokesperson for the communes in Parliament.

Although commons Until now, they have run in coalition with Podem, and they will also do so in the municipal elections in May in those places where the Catalan faction of Podemos is present, the truth is that the formation led by Ione Belarra has little weight in Catalonia and The force that has the greatest representation in that progressive left is the one led by Colau, which is in turn an alliance between Barcelona in Comúthe space of the mayoress, team, United Left and Alternative (EUiA) and LCI.

In the last general elections, the comuns achieved seven deputies and placed themselves as the fourth force with the most votes, but in 2015 and 2016 the confluence of the left achieved an unprecedented first position in that territory until then, under the figure of Xavi Domènech, now out of politics. In those appointments, En Comú Podem obtained 12 seats. Those were the years of the rise of Podemos and the confluence managed to make profitable a discourse that was difficult to fit in those years in an autonomous key, with the elections raised as plebiscites on the independence movement, but interesting at the national level: a position contrary to sovereignty but open to an eventual referendum.

The winks to the process

Surely aware of this, Díaz, who has a very good image in the Catalan electorate according to most surveys, made a veiled reference to the process in his act on Saturday by asking for “respect and recognition” for Catalonia. “They say that in Catalonia you have closed a part of your history”, he began. “I don’t know, that time and people decide what they want to do with the history of our country. You have in me a friend from Catalonia. I want us to speak different languages, respect and recognition, and from Sumar you will have what you deserve”, he stressed.

Another piece of information revealed by recent polls on the Parliament is that, while the sentiment for independence falls, ERC maintains its voters. It is in that bag where the communes, within Sumar or whatever name the space led by Díaz ends up having, can find the answers to that need to broaden the electorate that the non-sovereignty left now has. the commons They are also known for their pragmatism when it comes to negotiating political coalitions, an asset that seems inalienable in a year with two elections on the horizon and a situation of extreme delicacy in a left that is undergoing reconstruction.

*With information from Arturo Puente.