Podemos and Yolanda Díaz stage their estrangement

The battle escalates in public, where no one hides the differences anymore.

40 days before the municipal and regional elections, Yolanda Díaz and Podemos cross reproaches and complicate the agreement to go together to the general elections under the leadership of the second vice president of the Government.

"If you ask for clean cake unity, you are depressing your electorate, and then it doesn't matter if you shake hands," Díaz warned on Sunday during an interview on La Sexta.

The head of Labor also suggested that she would not support the United We Can (UP) candidate in the Community of Madrid on May 28 and she questioned the current role of Iglesias.

"I don't know how yesterday's host salad helps," the former leader of Podemos responded very harshly the next day.

The match,

Very upset with the statements of the Galician leader - and particularly critical of her in recent times - he insisted this Monday on "reaching out" and calling for unity, but the distance grows with each new confrontation at the gates of an election that are key to the future of UP.

Both the organization led by Minister Ione Belarra and Izquierda Unida —which run together in 10 of the 12 communities at stake— have already transferred to the vice president a list of municipalities where they would like to receive her support in the campaign.

“It is very worrying that Yolanda Díaz continues to reinforce that idea, that possibility, that Podemos and Sumar will not go to the elections together.

This generates a lot of sadness in many people and I think that Podemos has to do our part, which is to reach more agreements than ever for these municipal and regional elections, defend unity and continue defending, despite reproaches, a coalition agreement between Podemos and Sumar for the following generals”, summed up bluntly the number two of the formation and head of Equality, Irene Montero.

“Our commitment [with the unit] is clear: if there is a will to sign that agreement for open primaries [a condition that Podemos publicly marked to attend the launch of his candidacy more than two weeks ago], I am available this afternoon, the week that It comes or after the May elections,” Belarra said early in the morning on RNE, questioned about her party's predisposition to agree with Díaz.

“Do you think that if we sign a document today to Podemos, to its general secretary, saying that, they are inside Sumar?

I tell you no.

Do you know how agreements are reached?

When you want to reach agreements ”, the vice president had questioned the intentions of the formation.

The interview on Sunday has made the party that appointed her as leader of the space two years ago very bad, although he was already absent from the presentation on April 2.

Díaz's response to the question of whether on 28-M he will vote for the Más Madrid candidate, Mónica García, or for the United Podemos candidate, Alejandra Jacinto, was especially “offensive” for some sources consulted.

Yolanda Díaz's dilemma is clear because she, as Vice President of the Government, is the main institutional face of Unidas Podemos, but Más Madrid is a relevant actor in the new electoral platform that she is creating, Sumar.

And, to further complicate the situation, in Sumar there is also, in a very prominent way, Izquierda Unida, which in Madrid competes with Podemos.

“You can imagine who I am going to vote for, I say.

Like all of Spain," Díaz replied to the interviewer,

Jordi Évole, with a smile.

Although he avoided specifying more, he did not deny the journalist when he stated that he believed that he would vote for Mónica García, from Más Madrid.

"It seems to me that the best candidates are those of UP," said Belarra, dodging the clash.

Jacinto herself, at a press conference, declined to comment on the vice president's reaction: "I feel convinced that I am doing things right, of having joined all the political forces that have wanted to join in Madrid," she said, alluding to the refusal from Más Madrid to go with them.

Sources from some parties close to the project privately acknowledge that the interview has not contributed to unity.

In an article posted on

Pablo Iglesias analyzes the interview and concludes that, although it "move Yolanda and Sumar further away from Podemos", "the need for progressive governments not to fall" justifies continuing to try to get closer to going to the elections together.

“I don't know how yesterday's host salad helps us do well in the municipal and regional elections.

It would make more sense to talk about the proposals, the program, how to stop the right," he also said in Rac1 before criticizing, in Sunday's talk, "the disregard for the women who rule in Podemos and justify their current role.

“When [Díaz] said 'he should shut up and let himself fly'... What I do is what my general secretary has asked me to do.

Ione Belarra told me: 'We don't have anyone on TV who defends our ideas,

"If you ask for clean cake unity, you depress your electorate."#LoDeYolanda pic.twitter.com/ONoEEW3or5

– Lo de Évole (@LoDeEvole) April 16, 2023

Both Podemos and Sumar have wanted to distance themselves from each other lately.

Belarra's party took advantage of the Spring Festival held in Zaragoza this weekend to vindicate itself before its own "as a different project" from Díaz's, while the vice president has made ugly the "noise" caused by some of its strategies and affirmed in an interview in EL PAÍS that a Sumar without Podemos "would not be a failure".

The public dispute occurs in a pre-electoral context and in the face of the fear, recognized by the party, that the friction will take its toll on its candidates.

According to sources from the formation, the secretary of the Organization of Podemos, Lilith Verstrynge,

A little over a month ago, he personally sent Díaz's team a draft campaign calendar to be able to balance agendas and for the vice president to come to support the UP candidacies "where there are unity agreements, open to territorial preferences" that she might have .

Izquierda Unida, as confirmed on Monday by its federal spokesperson, Sira Rego, did the same, and from Díaz's entourage they indicate that the requests also extend to other parties.

The final schedule will be made public in a few days, they say.

More information

'Tremendous battle between Évole and Yolanda Díaz', by Jesús Ruiz Mantilla

For now, Díaz will go to Barcelona this Saturday to support its mayoress, Ada Colau, in full celebrations of Sant Jordi.

The vice president is expected to travel to Galicia in May, where her father, Suso Díaz, and the economic adviser to the Ministry of Labor Manuel Lago close the joint candidacy of Podemos —whose leadership is similar to the leader of Sumar—, Esquerda Unida and Alianza Green in A Coruña.

Faced with a complex scenario, less mobilized for the left and growth of the right, Díaz's support for one or the other may be decisive in expanding options on 28-M.

It remains to be seen if the campaign will serve as a truce to appease, even for a few days, the internal conflict.

“

It is not the same to hold open primaries as to agree on primaries in an office.

#LoDeYolanda pic.twitter.com/vnTM2qZ600

– Lo de Évole (@LoDeEvole) April 16, 2023

Podemos assures that he was unaware of Sánchez's plan to mobilize 50,000 Sareb homes

The leader of Podemos has assured first thing in RNE that she was unaware of President Pedro Sánchez's plan, announced on Sunday in Valencia, to mobilize 50,000 Sareb homes for affordable rent.

"I did not know it, but it responds to what we have been demanding for several years," she stated in relation to one of the main flags of Podemos this legislature, the norm that will also regulate the price of rentals.

“This weekend there were colleagues who said that the PSOE does this for electoralism.

The important thing is that once and for all we have a housing law ”, she added.

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