The difficulty of adding up in a cannibal culture

Revolutions usually fail sooner because of their internal divisions than because of the strength of the objective to be beaten. History is full of examples, but who best expressed it was the intelligent film The Life of Brian, in which the four cats of that mythical Popular Front of Judea welcomed a fifth member who, beyond demanding the common hatred of the Romans that united them, they asked the same hatred to the Jewish People's Front. the Popular Front of the Jewish People and other variations that they themselves could no longer distinguish.

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General election results

The brawl that broke out was cannibalistic. And something like this is what has lived that space located to the left of the PSOE, born of discontent, weariness and indignation of 15-M with the promise of "assaulting the skies" and that has gone from the 71 seats achieved in 2016 to 31 in 2023 in the new reincarnation led by Yolanda Díaz.

The road to the thinning of Podemos has been long and sustained. The decline has been experienced in every election. But the division has been growing to the point of weighing down the launch and result of Sumar, the platform led by Yolanda Díaz that aspired to at least equal or exceed the data reached in November 2019 by Unidas Podemos (35 seats, with 13% of the votes) and Más País (3 seats, with 2.3% of the votes). that were then separated and that have converged in Sumar along with other formations. Yesterday it added 31 seats with 12.2% of the vote.

The withdrawal of Pablo Iglesias from the vice-presidency of the Government and the leadership of Unidas Podemos gave the starting signal for a platform that has united the different leftist groups accustomed to living with more differences than points of union. That in itself has been a miracle. Iglesias himself pointed to Yolanda Díaz and she picked up the glove as a historic challenge that would allow overcoming the differences and achieve the push to become necessary in any PSOE government. But the intentions were soon shaken by the same poison that was intended to fight: division.

The differences between Ione Belarra and Irene Montero (Unidas Podemos), on the one hand, and Yolanda Díaz herself (from the PCE), on the other, dynamited from the beginning the propulsion that the Sumar platform could have acquired. Above all, because the discrepancies focused on the ugliest: the mere battle for power.

While the leaders of Podemos fought for their quota, Iglesias was dedicated to airing the differences in public. Hating the Jews more than the Romans themselves was the favorite sport of the survivors of a project from which others such as Íñigo Errejón, Carolina Bescansa and more had already been purged.

The group had been diminishing to bites and the launch of the Sumar platform could not be unscathed by that cannibal culture. Díaz herself also added dust by choosing not to invite the most significant podemitas to the stages and to wait for them to crash in the municipal and regional elections in May, which is what happened.

The leader aspired to negotiate with them or their remains after 28-M, but the electoral advance caught her by surprise and forced a negotiation that left corpses, including that of Minister Montero. The campaign also started lukewarm and only in the last week Díaz pulled out the fang against his old acquaintance, Núñez Feijóo and especially against Abascal, before whom he grew in the debate to three.

The result, although lower than that of 2019, is in any case important for a formation that has just begun to walk. And key to the chances of the PSOE to achieve a firm front against the right.

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