Yolanda Díaz and the advice of the Pasionaria

Yolanda Díaz has moved the frames.

This expression will not say much to a large part of the readers, however, many Galicians when reading it quickly associate it with a recurring image in rural Galicia to describe the generally clandestine practice of altering the markings that delimit another's land for the benefit of others. own.

Yolanda Díaz, in her suggestive prologue to the reissue of

by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2021), stated that the authors “moved the invisible frameworks of Western thought.

In full view of the world, in broad daylight.

Both opened a new conversation.

With a spirit as hopeful as it is revolutionary, disrupting conventions and denouncing atavistic injustices”.

Well, Yolanda Díaz has moved the frames of Spanish politics, and she has also done it in full view of the whole world and in broad daylight, with her listening process, touring the entire country, catapulted by her image as the most valued political leader and for a productive management at the head of the Ministry of Labor, as endorsed by the labor reform, the increases in the minimum wage, the

and the Ertes.

Díaz, a communist militant who intends to lead a political space to the left of the PSOE that is ideologically heterogeneous, electorally fragmented and personally at odds;

it has also opened a new conversation, forcing the rest of the political actors to position themselves before the irruption of a new electoral subject, Sumar, who can change the correlation of parliamentary forces in the next legislature.

Her project has aroused hope not only among an electorate to the left of the PSOE that was already showing signs of lethargy in the last electoral calls, but also among part of the socialist voters, who view with sympathy both the forms and the results of the second vice president

Her family origins, as the daughter of the historic Galician communist leader and trade unionist Suso Díaz;

her professional career as a labor lawyer;

and her experience in politics, as a councilor and deputy mayor in Ferrol, deputy in the Galician Parliament and in the Congress of Deputies, endorse a trajectory closer to institutional solidity than to Adamism on the part of the new politics.

However, that

It was not an impediment to breaking with some traditional schemes, such as the launch of the innovative coalition Alternativa Galega de Esquerda in 2012, with the advice of a 33-year-old Pablo Iglesias;

or to resign from Izquierda Unida in 2019 for not decisively supporting the negotiating strategy of Pablo Iglesias, then 41, to force a coalition government.

And here a key name appears in the political life of Yolanda Díaz, that of the founder of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias.

A personal friend of Díaz since that same year, 2012, and one of her greatest political supporters, he proposed her as Minister of Labor within the coalition government and as an electoral candidate for the presidency of the Government after the resignation of Iglesias himself as vice president of the Government.

But by moving the frames, Yolanda Díaz has also moved them internally, in her own political space.

Sumar's claim to incorporate political parties but go beyond their acronyms, and therefore present itself as a project free of ties and partisan interests, has meant for Yolanda Díaz a clear distance from her former travel companion.

The latter's attitude has led the confrontation to a point of difficult return, with personal attacks included.

For her part, Díaz has chosen to date not to feed the conflict with direct allusions, although she does not lavish herself on gestures of détente and maintains a supposed indifference in public that can be confused with inaction.

It is not the purpose of this article to deal with the contradictory and erratic role of Pablo Iglesias in this whole process,

, continuing with another recurring expression from rural Galicia.

Leaving aside the suitability of the chosen tempos (with a Díaz who has yet to confirm his more than probable electoral candidacy) and the convenience of certain gestures (such as attending the famous Valencia rally in November 2021 without the presence of Podemos) , if political communication is based on images (real or mental), it is evident that there have not been many images of recognition of what Podemos has meant.

A leader who defends the politics of affections has neglected the affections towards a part of her political space, highly victimized politically and anchored in an ethic of resistance.

She is not about giving away starting positions on electoral lists based on the threat to break up launched by the purples (although that threat sounds as irresponsible as it is real).

It is about politically reincorporating, but also emotionally recovering, a part of the electorate, and the militants organically identified with Podemos who need to feel vindicated.

It is highly debatable that this part should be the backbone of a project that looks to the future from a political perspective that is more constructive than challenging, but it is also debatable that something can be structured without incorporating all the political capital accumulated to date.

Díaz, as a communist militant and tireless reader, especially of literature but also of history, surely knows well the advice that another illustrious communist, Dolores Ibarruri, La

, lent to Santiago Carrillo.

It was the year 1956 when the Spanish communists launched their policy of national reconciliation, to overcome the divisions that occurred during the Civil War and add to the ranks of anti-Francoism anyone who was committed to achieving democracy, regardless of their origins or background. last.

In this context, La Pasionaria was aware that Santiago had not spoken to his father, the PSOE leader Wenceslao Carrillo, since 1939, when the latter supported the coup d'état by Colonel Segismundo Casado against the legitimate government of Juan Negrín to put an end to Republican resistance and try to negotiate an impossible peace with General Franco.

Ibarruri did not hesitate to question his party partner directly: “Santiago, if we are committed to reconciliation between the Spanish,

It is evident that the drama of the events carried out by Carrillo and his father far exceed the disagreements between Yolanda Díaz and the founder of Podemos, but it does not escape anyone that in politics we are what we do, not what we say.

In the same way that there could be no national reconciliation without practicing by example, it seems difficult to launch a political project called Sumar without the participation of a fundamental part of that sum.

For history lovers we leave one more note: Santiago Carrillo and his father reconciled.

José Manuel Rúa

is a professor of Political, Economic and Social History at the University of Barcelona.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber