Pablo Iglesias: "I knew my head would end up exposed in a pike"

Pablo Iglesias, this Saturday during his speech in the celebration of the centenary of the PCE.

He did not arrive by helicopter, like Santiago Carrillo, to that first party of the PCE after the legalization of the party held in June 1977, but the reappearance of Pablo Iglesias in a political act since his retirement on May 4 generated a lot of expectation. After four in the afternoon and surrounded by a score of militants and members of the leadership of the Communist Party, the former vice president walked among the tents of the Rivas-Vaciamadrid compound chosen to commemorate the centenary of the organization. More than a thousand people overflowed the capacity of the space enabled to listen to his speech together with the secretary general of the party, Enrique Santiago, and the applause lasted several minutes. "Yes, we can," the militant public shouted, as if it were a purple assembly.“The good thing about not having political responsibilities is that you don't have to modulate your speech and you can say whatever you want. I'm going to take advantage of this advantage ”, he advanced.

An example of the relevance that the founder of Podemos continues to have, away from politics, was given by a small group of young people from the extreme left, who just a minute after Iglesias began his speech, tried to seek visibility and explode the act by cry of "where is the change, where is the progress". The activists were cut down by security personnel as the attendees rejected their proclamations. "Those who give headlines and clicks to the far-right media are nothing more than provocateurs who deserve all the forcefulness of popular and communist militancy," exclaimed the former vice president when he took up the floor. Then, a review of the party's one hundred years of history, its "will to state",the “exclusion clause” that removed the communists from power in the Transition and the change in Spanish politics since the 15-M movement ten years ago.

"This exclusion clause implies that the general elections had to be repeated four times from 2015 to 2019," Iglesias explained. "That is what makes all the powers that do not have democratic controls have been seen in a way that had never been seen in the last 40 years of democratic history in Spain," he said in reference to the media, the elite of the judicial and economic power. For the former secretary general of Podemos, the will of the state inherent to the communist tradition implies "many contradictions", because governing with the PSOE, for example, "is not the most leftist position." His speech also left sharp sentences: “There are naïve people who think that the PP is going to sit down to negotiate the renewal of the CGPJ. That time is over ”. From his time in the Government,He especially remembered the clash in the summer of 2020 to carry out the Budgets.

"One part wanted an agreement with Ciudadanos and another with ERC and EH Bildu," he recalled.

"We started running and we won that race and I am perfectly aware that the fact that we won meant that my head would be exposed in a pike."

Iglesias' intervention ended with a call to the militancy to react to the homophobic demonstration last Saturday in Madrid.

"The response to fascism and provocateurs cannot be delegated to the institutions," he claimed.

"It takes anti-fascist militancy in the neighborhoods that builds social counterpowers" to curb their "weight" in public space.

The former vice president left the venue a few minutes after the event closed, as did his successor, Ione Belarra, in the morning. Irene Montero, who was a member of the Communist Youth, participated in the afternoon at a table on feminism. At noon, the queues to buy the tortilla portions at five euros exceeded twenty minutes. There were no ministers in it. The atmosphere was festive, with audiences of all ages walking between the booths of each autonomy. Throughout the weekend, the organization hopes that around 50,000 people will participate in the 43rd edition of the festivities - they have been held every year since 1977 except the last one due to the pandemic. "I used to go to the party when it was held in the Casa de Campo and they gave us paella," recalled Antonio Díaz, a 72-year-old member of the PCE, in the afternoon. "Now is another time,nothing to do with that ”, he resigned himself. Rice is still distributed, but in the eighties the attendees numbered in the hundreds of thousands and the concerts attracted more or less like-minded citizens en masse.

Popular unity against the advance of the extreme right

Representatives of United We Can in the morning vindicated popular unity against the advance of the extreme right.

The secretary general of Podemos, Ione Belarra, called to "take care" of the "majority" that supports the coalition government and the political space of UP.

"You have to be very alert because the economic elites, when the democratic tools are not useful for their objectives, they bet on the reaction, the extreme right," warned the Minister of Social Rights, who also advocated "widening" the political space.

"People would like to see Yolanda [Díaz] as the first president of Spain," he said to unanimous applause from the audience.

"We must work to reach the [municipal] elections, making unity possible," he said.

“The extreme right is destroying democracy day by day. The time has come to draw a red line and say 'enough is enough', ”proclaimed the leader of Alianza Verde and UP deputy, Juan López de Uralde. "It is essential to recover the street, the word in the bars," he added.

"The street is not going to take away from us because it is our natural space," insisted the federal spokesperson for Izquierda Unida, Sira Rego, who replaced the Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón, in the debate, who did not arrive on time for the appointment after his flight from La Palma was canceled by the ash from the volcano. Gerardo Pisarello, parliamentarian for the Commons, defended popular unity "to build republicanism and a republic." During the intervention, he recounted his experience as “the son of the great neoliberal and neo-fascist reaction that began in Latin America in the seventies”, who arrived in Madrid and saw his mother testify “for the first time” before a judge for the murder of his father during the dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla. “I will never forget that the lawyers were two young communists. Virginia Díaz and Enrique Santiago ”,he said before an audience that applauded excitedly.

Tribute to Julio Anguita

In the central rally of the party, held late on Saturday, Enrique Santiago vindicated the role of the PCE within the Government of Spain, after more than eighty years without a presence in a Council of Ministers.

At the event, a tribute to the former secretary general of the party, Julio Anguita, who died last year, Santiago defended that "the most important thing" of the centenary is "all that remains to be done."

He thus referred to the real equality of women, the union of the youths of the world in the face of climate change or the creation of "new fair production models" and "sustainable" that "belong to the working classes."