Yolanda Díaz resigns from participating in the formation of a single left-wing candidacy in Andalusia

The Second Vice President of the Government and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, attends the media in Seville this Thursday. EDUARDO BRIONES (EUROPA PRESS) (Europa Press)

The fragmented Andalusian left looks at Yolanda Díaz, but the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor has no intention of returning her gaze.

For now.

“It is evident that the country project” that he promotes “is not going to arrive” in time for the Andalusian elections, he said this Thursday in an interview on Canal Sur, where he made it clear that his times do not coincide with those of his fellow Andalusians .

Díaz is the leader of a project about which little is known: she says that it is not a “sum of acronyms”, that she has not yet decided if she will be a candidate, and that she wants it to go beyond the parties.

A six-month “active listening” process is given to make a decision.

Díaz thinks of the general elections of 2023, where Andalusia contributes 61 deputies to Congress, but before that there will be polls in Andalusia.

The divided Andalusian left holds meetings to see if they can forge a joint candidacy as they already tried for the December 2018 elections and which ended up imploding: 11 of the 17 deputies of the Adelante Andalucía group, formed by Podemos, IU and Andalusian formations, were expelled for turncoats and for months they have been non-attached deputies.

If there is something that is clear at this time, it is that the group led by Teresa Rodríguez will not be in another alliance.

The leader of Anticapitalistas demands "to start talking" that they be restored to their original positions since otherwise it would be as if "an abused woman is asked to return to her abuser," according to what she said a month ago .

Basically, Rodríguez's main discrepancy with the other formations is the same as always: how they relate to the PSOE.

Díaz does not want to be associated with any of the formations in contention, and in his official debut in Andalusia, he has preferred an act on labor reform at the Faculty of Law of the University of Seville with the general secretaries of the CC OO unions and UGT, Nuria López and Carmen Castilla, with whom he feels comfortable and because he considers that “there is no better cover letter”.

And he has refused to hold a meeting at a table with all the leaders who pursue the Andalusian agreement as they had suggested.

However, outside the agenda and focus, the minister has held a meeting with the IU coordinator, Toni Valero;

the general secretary of the Andalusian Communist Party, Ernesto Alba;

and the Podemos coordinator, Martina Velarde, at a time when Díaz's position with the Podemos leadership regarding the delivery of weapons to Ukraine is diametrically opposed.

Sources from United We Can have pointed out that "there has been full agreement" with Díaz in that "an opportunity opens up in Andalusia to raise an exciting government alternative, also taking into account the wear and tear that the Popular Party is suffering."

He has also met with the coordinator of Más País Andalucía, Esperanza Gómez;

and with Equo.

All of them have attended the event held at the University, as well as the three spokespersons of the Andalusian Levantaos coalition, made up of Más País, Andalucía por Sí and the Andalusian People's Initiative, which on March 1 registered this brand in the registry of parties politicians.

Díaz has filled the capacity of the assembly hall of the Faculty of Law (400 people) and another auxiliary room and has been received with the cry of president.

Discontent in Andalusian parties

Diaz's words, disregarding the left-wing alternative in Andalusia, did not please the parties involved.

"It's not that he doesn't make it to the elections, it's that he doesn't want to," said a IU source.

Modesto González, spokesman for Andaluces Levantaos, has assured that "not considering the Andalusian elections a priority is a mistake" and was unaware that his coalition partner had a meeting with the vice president.

This leader sees an agreement with United We Can as "difficult" because "it puts the interests of Madrid above".

The negotiations to congeal a leftist alliance that prevents a useless fragmentation of the vote have not yet come to fruition.

Independent leaders are acting as referees in the talks, but today nothing is closed.

United We Can believe that there is plenty of time until the Andalusian elections are held in the conviction that the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno, will hurry until autumn to dissolve Parliament, something that remains to be seen.

But off the microphone they express concern that at the end of the legislature they still do not know the name of their candidate, nor if it will be from IU or Podemos, nor the brand with which they will concur.

Sources from various parties assure that the main difficulty in closing a coalition is not in the electoral program, but in the “usual”: the place each party occupies on the electoral lists.

And within each party, the position of each current;

and within each current, the subgroups that make it up.