Yolanda Díaz advances towards the coalition on the left while the pressure on Podemos to agree intensifies

Everything moves in the space to the left of the PSOE. Just 24 hours after the electoral advance announced by President Pedro Sánchez, Yolanda Díaz took the expected step on Tuesday to attend the general elections on July 23 with Sumar: the registration as a party of her brand in the Ministry of the Interior. The speed of the process shows that the vice president had already advanced a lot in the design of her own formation and that the advance of the elections does not represent a handicap for the project she leads. Space sources define this new political force, Movimiento Sumar, as an "instrumental party" that will serve to "guarantee the participation of independent and professional people in the confluence." The new organization seeks to attend the general elections "grouping all the political formations that share the country's project for the next decade", for which it has already opened negotiations with Podemos and has agreements with fifteen parties. Time is of the essence. There are only nine days left to reach that coalition pact and a large number of political forces have already closed ranks between Monday and Tuesday with Díaz. The big doubt remains Podemos, which for months has claimed itself as the "engine" of space and was left out of the launch of the platform in April. After the debacle of the left in the regional and municipal elections, everyone is now pressing for a pact as soon as possible, without the need to exhaust the deadlines, and the margin of maneuver of Ione Belarra's party is narrowing.

On Tuesday, the acting Balearic vice president, Pedro Yllanes, called for the resignation of the party's leadership, an anomalous statement in a party with hardly any internal contestation. "It is surprising that Lilith Verstrynge, Ione Belarra or Pablo Echenique have not disappeared from political life," said the judge, who was no longer attending Sunday's elections. "Either there is no one to take over from them or they must have a lot of attachment to the position," said Yllanes, a profile close to Díaz, during an interview on Onda Cero in which he described as "suicide" that Podemos could present an independent candidacy in these elections. "The bet is this and the path is this," Begoña Alfaro, the party's leader in the community, told Noticias de Navarra. Other territorial voices share the reflection, especially after elections that have been lethal for Podemos in several autonomies and that have left the militancy deeply demobilized. The formation is outside the Parliaments of Madrid, Valencia and the Canary Islands, in addition to retaining a single representative in Aragon and the Balearic Islands, where they also governed.

The noise had been reduced with the beginning of the electoral campaign so that the internal battle did not weigh down the options of its candidates. After 28-M, and already with the formal advance, the speech is also different, although some sources of Podemos continue to slip in private that the talks are very slow for the haste that the moment demands – the deadline for the registration of coalitions ends on June 9, according to the electoral law. And they point out that, if in the next 48 hours there is no significant progress, the chances of reaching a pact are receding. These warnings clash with the arguments publicly raised by Pablo Iglesias, who on Monday assured the SER that now it was time to "be humble" and that they were "others", in explicit reference to Mónica García (leader of Más Madrid) or Joan Baldoví (of Compromís), who had to "send more" and "exercise leadership" when it comes to securing a single ballot to the left of the PSOE.

"Europeanist" movement

The new organization registered on Tuesday is defined as "a pro-European, plural movement, with a firm will to face the challenge of the climate emergency and move towards a freer, more feminist and more egalitarian society," according to Sumar sources. The idea is that Yolanda Díaz has an organization and structure from which to include independent members in the electoral lists and then agree with the rest of the formations a coalition. The objective of this platform, according to the same sources, is to "make Yolanda Díaz the first president of the Government of Spain and guarantee a progressive majority that allows defending the rights conquered and continue advancing."

The signs of support for the head of Labor were cascading since Monday. The first, Izquierda Unida, when releasing a statement and reiterating its federal coordinator, Alberto Garzón, that there is "not a minute to lose: everyone to work unitarily within Sumar," a phrase in which he emphasized that integration in the coalition. Until now, Podemos has always defended a bilateral negotiation with the platform of the vice president and refused to "dilute" itself in a new space. It was precisely Diaz's refusal to agree only on open primaries with them that served as a pretext for the formation to absent itself from the April inauguration. Today everyone discards, due to the rush of the deadlines, that there may be votes open to citizens in the coming days.

Among the supporters, also the leader of More Madrid, Monica Garcia, was in favor of the confluence, although she recalled the weight of her party. "Sumar has 10 days to consolidate the formula, but it is a reality in which we, with all the generosity, with almost this 20% that we have taken out in the Community of Madrid, with the will to make a progressive space in which we all fit, we start rowing from now, "she said in La Sexta. For the Minister of Universities, Joan Subirats (Catalunya en Comú), Sunday's poor results indicate that unity should be bet. "This reinforces the need to enter into a process of confluence around Sumar, and that is what we are going to be in the coming days," he said during a visit to the Madrid Book Fair. Greens Equo and Green Alliance also spoke in similar terms. For its part, Compromís agreed on Tuesday to constitute a negotiating commission to open dialogue with Sumar to attend the general elections together, although its Executive demands to lead the candidacies in the Valencian Community.

The coalition is necessary to survive and have some chance of revalidating the Government with the PSOE, all parties acknowledge. The opposite would be assured destruction and, after 28-M, it would further complicate the future of Podemos.

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