Yolanda Díaz’s daisy still has a few petals left, but at least she has already revealed when she will separate the last one. The second vice president of the Government has advanced this Monday the date for the expected act in which she will foreseeably announce her candidacy for the general elections: it will be next April 2 in a great act in Madrid in which she intends to have the main leaders of the forces with which he is speaking to form Sumar, the political platform with which he aspires to help revalidate the Government.
The conversations between Yolanda Díaz and Podemos address the holding of primaries in Sumar and confirm rapprochement
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Díaz has announced the date for the event that will foreseeably serve as the launch track for Sumar through a coordinated message on social networks. “The listening process is about to end and next Sunday, April 2 at 11:30 a.m., we would like you to be with us in Madrid, in Magariños. We have many things to tell you. At SUMAR we want to do many things to improve the country in which we live, but we cannot do it alone. We need all citizens. We need you ”, she said.
At this event, which will be held in the Estudiantes de basketball pavilion, the sectoral working groups that have functioned as the platform’s ideas laboratory will present their conclusions for what they have called “a country project for the next decade”, a slogan with which the vice president wants to convey that the tool she designs is not simply an electoral vehicle.
Although the vice president wants to wait until that day to announce the decision, it seems a fact that she has already chosen to present herself as a candidate and close the circle that opened with the departure of Pablo Iglesias from the Government in May 2021 and delegated the leadership of the space of Unidas Podemos in Yolanda Díaz, then just a Minister of Labor who had consolidated her leadership with social dialogue, the commitment to ERTE during the pandemic and her good image in the face of society.
Two years have passed since then in which the decisions that Díaz has been making, with the creation of a platform that intends to go beyond the parties, although not relegate them, and incorporate civil society, have confronted his predecessor and They have generated not a few tensions with the party that led her to form part of the Government, with which she has begun to speak for a few months to guarantee the unity of the left, a condition that seems insurmountable if the left wants to continue having options to reissue the coalition.
The movement of the minister puts a mark on the calendar that will in turn unlock some pieces. Over the last few months, his team has held talks with the different forces that he wants to bring to an electoral platform that has yet to be defined, some fifteen different types of political forces but among which Podemos, the stone, stands out above the rest. cornerstone of the Spanish left, which, although it has shown its willingness to work for political unity, has not yet decided whether or not it will even attend that event.
Yolanda Díaz’s decision will save the first of the issues that bothered the formation led by Ione Belarra. The main voices of the formation have asked the vice president on numerous occasions to decide if she is going to be a “candidate”, and a little further, if she is going to be the candidate of Podemos and Unidas Podemos. On the first Sunday of April, Díaz will resolve at least part of the question and will be able to activate the following movements of the political project that he has in hand and whose launch has been delayed in recent months due to various factors, so much so that the political news is very close to the regional elections. and municipal on May 28.
Before this announcement is made, Podemos wants to have tied at least a draft of the coalition agreement with Sumar that gives it some minimum guarantees to be able to attend the event. Training sources report that, in order for Belarra or Irene Montero to be able to sit in the first row of seats, the negotiating teams must reach a minimum agreement. The party does not reveal the details of its aspirations in these conversations but it does state that it wants open primaries to define the candidacy that Díaz should lead for the next general elections.
In the environment of the second vice president, they cool down the idea of an agreement before April 2 and they venture June as the month in which the negotiations will really begin. That is at least what the secretary of the Organization of Podemos, Lilith Verstrynge, stated a few weeks ago that the Sumar team had transferred to them. Since January, a small group headed by the chief of staff of the Ministry of Labour, Josep Vendrell, and by number three of Podemos on the other side of the table have held at least three meetings in which the first terms. According to sources close to Sumar, this week another round of meetings is scheduled not only with Podemos, but also with the rest of the formations.
The flying goal of June is not an express wish of Díaz but rather of the rest of the parties that he has for his project and that due to their regionalist idiosyncrasy have the energy invested in the next municipal regional elections. Many of these forces are part of the so-called Turia Agreement, an entente of formations that intends to join forces in the face of these elections and that includes Compromís, Más País, the Drago Project of Alberto Rodríguez, the Chunta Aragonesista or Més. Some of these forces, such as Compromís in the Valencian Community or Más Madrid, also compete directly in the upcoming elections with Podemos and in both places they start in an advantageous position that they aspire to consolidate.
