Yolanda Díaz, about Sumar: "Podemos was born from the challenge, I look for the construction"

The Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, has vindicated this Sunday the differences between the Sumar platform, which she presented this Friday at the Matadero in Madrid, and Podemos. “Podemos is born from the challenge and I start from the construction”, she has assured in an interview with El Pais.

“The progressive forces have felt comfortable in saying no, in opposing, in challenging the contrary,” the vice president assured. Díaz has explained that the “citizen movement” that she has decided to launch is going to be “a small piece of the collective gear in which I not only deconstruct the challenge, but also want to build it.” “In the context in which Podemos emerged, it was normal for the challenge to be echoed. Now it is different.”

Asked if it is necessary to reconfigure the political space of United We Can, the minister assured that “it is not about recovering spaces, but about expanding democracy, making our society livable and turning politics into something useful”.

This Friday, Díaz began the journey of Sumar in Madrid, the process of listening to citizens that will take him the next six months to tour the whole of Spain in different acts with social groups with which he seeks to configure his political project. She did it in a massive act with the assistance of more than 5,000 people, and without leaders of the parties that support her – those that form United We Can and More Country –, just as she wanted, to give the leading role to the citizens.

The vice president explained in the interview that Sumar is a movement in which “the leading role is going to fall on the citizens.” “I want a beloved country, a better Spain in which we all fit, let’s think how we think. The conception that there is of Spain by some voices is very small, very sad. And I want a Spain like the one this week, that of Pride , diverse, in which we think differently, that we have a future, that, ultimately, we are happier”.

When the process of listening to the country ends, Díaz will decide whether to take the step and run as a candidate for the Presidency of the Government, representing the political space to the left of the PSOE. The term to configure her project is one year. In 2023, the different ‘Sumar’ working groups, which will be made up of representatives of civil society, will present a proposal for a “new social contract” that aims to shape what Spain will be like in the next decade.

“I will row in favor as one more and collectively we will do what we want to be,” explained Díaz when asked if the decision not to clarify whether he will stand for election could harm his project. The vice president has assured that now is the time to “open a space for thought” about “the country we want.”

Yolanda Díaz has claimed the transversality of her project. “I do not want corners. I am a moderate woman in the forms and in the contents”, she has assured. “This country in favor we have to do with many hands, many music, many hearts and many different ways of understanding each other. As in the exceptional moments of history, what is at stake is democracy.”

The Vice President of the Government has also ruled on the audios between Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo and María Dolores de Cospedal. Some recordings of May 5, 2017 in which Villarejo acknowledges to the then General Secretary of the PP and Minister of Defense that the PISA report (Pablo Iglesias Sociedad Anónima) —the document of the political brigade without letterhead or police signature that tried to demonstrate irregular financing of Podemos and that it was leaked to the press—it was “garbage”.

In the dialogue, seized in the registry of the commissioner’s properties and that is not incorporated into any legal case, Villarejo tells the popular leader that they have told him that Iglesias wants to meet him and that he gives him “cane” because he does not do “neither fucking case.” “Well, that’s a traitor, eh?” Cospedal replies about the leader of Podemos. “Coletas is a son of a bitch,” Villarejo insults, to which she agrees that he is “a full-fledged son of a bitch.”

“The PP has to be held accountable for what it has done to a democratic political formation and what it has done to its leaders,” said Díaz. The Minister of Labor has asked the current leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to purge political responsibilities “for the sake of democracy” and that it is not enough to say ‘this was many years ago’. “Mr. Feijóo is the maximum leader of the PP, who has used the instances paid with public resources of the Spanish men and women to bring down a political adversary. And this is very serious in a democracy.”

Díaz has assured in the interview that President Pedro Sánchez has not explained the agreements with Morocco and that he has only spoken with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares.

“This conversation should not only be held with us, but also with the opposition. Because if our country, in a majority way, thinks that this position is not correct, we have to do something,” explained the vice president. “State policy is also debatable.”

Díaz has once again claimed dialogue “with the whole world” as a pillar of democracy, including the PP. “Democracy consists of talking to everyone, and I do not share many things with Mr. Feijóo, but he deserves that the president explain to him what Spain is doing.”

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