Yolanda Díaz convenes for April 2 the act of announcing her candidacy without having resolved the agreement with Podemos

Yolanda Díaz will clear up in less than two weeks one of the basic questions surrounding Sumar, the project with which she seeks to recompose the space to the left of the PSOE.

The Vice President of the Government will predictably announce on Sunday, April 2, in an act in Madrid, her candidacy for the December general elections, as can be deduced from the messages broadcast this Monday by her and her team on social networks.

Two years after being designated by Pablo Iglesias as the natural successor at the head of United We Can, the also Minister of Labor will announce her decision —on which she has not yet officially pronounced— just before the Easter holidays, at the Sports Center Antonio Magariños from the capital.

The completion of the launch, which has been postponed since the beginning of the year,

It comes after one of the most difficult weeks for Unidas Podemos, in which the difficulties in closing an agreement with Podemos have once again become evident.

The demand of Ione Belarra's party, which seeks to be recognized as the main actor in this new electoral space, highlights the enormous challenge still ahead.

Next April 2 we have new things to tell you 🥰✨ pic.twitter.com/E3aYhA9OGq

— Yolanda Díaz (@Yolanda_Diaz_) March 20, 2023

"Next April 2 we have new things to tell you," Díaz herself wrote on the networks, while the official Sumar account broadcast a video of the vice president inviting citizens to participate.

This past Sunday, the head of Labor already gave clues about the proximity of the announcement.

"In these days I am going to make, perhaps, one of the most important decisions of my life (...) I am going to do it immediately," she said in an act of her platform in Seville.

According to sources from his team, Díaz plans to surround himself with representatives of different social organizations for his announcement, a nuclear part of the process deployed throughout Spain, and will also invite the political parties that have already been present at the stops of the tour that began on July 8.

She is yet to see which profiles —and which formations— finally come.

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We can challenge the unity of Sumar

After days of evident tension, the vice president made a last call for unity on Sunday and intentionally paraphrased the former leader of Podemos Pablo Iglesias, repeating expressions that he had pronounced in a symbolic intervention in March 2019. That act in the museum square Reina Sofía de Madrid, in which Díaz was also present, meant the return of the party's founder after his paternity leave and the start of the pre-campaign for the generals after the traumatic departure of Íñigo Errejón.

“I know very well that it is difficult to add the different, the people who come from different political traditions.

But I am clear that if we aspire to change our country, when we agree 90% on the political program, we have to rise to the challenge that concerns us, and our obligation, whatever we think,

it is walking together,” Díaz appealed.

Four years earlier, Iglesias had said: "It is not easy to put together what is different, it is not easy to agree with other political traditions, but if we aspire to change this country and we agree on 90% of the program, we must have enough height to understand that we have to walk together”.

Precisely this Monday, the former vice president publishes an article on

in which he puts back on the table the need to decide Sumar's electoral lists in primaries.

"Following the Andalusian model of dispatches and leaks is walking towards disaster," says Iglesias, referring to the turbulent negotiations for a left-wing coalition in the regional elections in June last year.

In that case, Podemos had held its own internal primaries, but the agreement of the rest of the parties with which they were talking was that IU lead the unitary candidacy.

The Belarra organization resisted so much that the pact was reached

and their training ended up outside the official record.

"The open primaries are the only guarantee that, in the event that the parties do not reach an agreement on what each one weighs, unity is guaranteed," summarizes Iglesias in his analysis.

props

In the absence of 13 days for the vice president to make her announcement, the photo of that act is not defined.

Beyond the support of IU, En Comú Podem and the environmentalist Alianza Verde, it remains to be confirmed the presence of other parties outside of United We Can but called to form part of the future coalition, such as Más País, Más Madrid, Compromís, the Chunta Aragonesista or the canary Drago Project.

Some have already announced in private that they will opt to send intermediate positions, but not their leaders.

The proximity of the regional and municipal electoral campaign, Díaz's calculated ambiguity regarding these elections —some of the organizations compete among themselves and supporting some implies going against others— and the uncertainty surrounding Podemos make these formations mark for now some distance.

Podemos, for its part, has already conditioned its support on the need to obtain some prior guarantee that there will be an electoral coalition, although they do not close the door to continue negotiating afterwards.

Belarra's party has been asking the vice president for months to say if she wants to be her candidate too.

The head of Labor reiterates that in Sumar "everyone fits", but she is reluctant to publicly give preference to this formation over the rest.

Since July, Sumar has already toured all the communities except the Canary Islands, where it is scheduled to stop next weekend.

In parallel, the thousand experts that make up the 35 thematic working groups have been developing the project on a theoretical level, and their conclusions will be presented shortly.