There will be a high-voltage duel. Podemos has announced that it will run alone in the European elections in June 2024. This means that it will face Sumar for the first time in a national battle in which it will be able to measure forces face to face with Yolanda Díaz’s coalition in a struggle fiercely driven by the hegemony of the alternative left to the PSOE. In order not to succumb to this ordeal, where the party is betting its future on a card, Ione Belarra has commissioned Irene Montero this Saturday to be the head of the list of the purple candidacy on June 9.
“Dear Ione, I think we make a good team. I thank you for trusting me today and always and I answer yes,” Montero said shortly after being launched as a European candidate, which she will officially be when she goes through primaries. of process. The former Minister of Equality has indicated that she takes on this challenge “with reasons and hopes intact.”
The announcement of the Europeans was made this Saturday by the general secretary, Ione Belarra, at an event in Madrid in which Podemos wanted to give a boost with its militants to its new adventure independent of Sumar, with whom it broke up last week in the Congress to go to the Mixed Group with its five deputies. “He wasn’t dead, he was partying,” chanted the more than 600 militants who packed the Press Palace (with more than a thousand outside) when The Living Dead, by Peret, was played, in a version with Marina from Ojos de Brujo, with which the purple leaders have entered.
The electoral competition between Podemos and Sumar was an open secret even before the fracture was consummated. Well, the unity with sticks that was achieved for the July general elections was only a solution of convenience and not a friendly relationship with minimums. The grievances were piling up before, during and after that pact, and each party can point out the scars of so many fights on their bodies. After the breakup on December 5, it was only a matter of time before what some important voices in the party had previously demanded would be put on stage: going alone to the European Championships to face Sumar and demonstrate how much real support each and every one of them has. others. And go with everything, with Montero as the headliner.
Hence, even in Sumar they expected the step that Podemos has taken now. And not just because Pablo Iglesias slipped it last Tuesday. “In a very few months, some will realize that they have made Podemos much more invulnerable,” he warned. “New cards are going to be dealt.”
The European elections are favorable terrain for Podemos in the electoral battle with Sumar and for the purples to show their heads at their most decadent moment in terms of institutional representation and number of votes. Since these elections are held in a single constituency, the votes have the same weight throughout Spain. That is, they make the most of themselves, without losing a single ballot due to the game of provincial constituencies that operates in general ones. Thus, the distribution of MEPs is absolutely proportional to the total number of votes throughout Spain. It is something that favors obtaining seats with percentages that in general elections give nothing.
For the European war, Podemos is throwing all its chips into this bid to safeguard its future. He has already launched Irene Montero as a candidate without waiting. Not only because she is her main political asset, as Iglesias repeats whenever she can, which she revalues after being vetoed by Sumar on the Congressional lists, but also because precisely for this reason she is free, without any institutional position. And why not Belarra? Because if she leaves the deputy seat in Congress she would run and it would fall to Sumar.
Belarra launched this to Montero: “I want to ask you to help us raise the flag of social justice, feminism, environmentalism at the highest level; the flag of those who do not remain silent even when it is difficult to speak; the flag of those who do not give up even when they defeat us. There is no one better than you to help us get back on our feet a brave, ambitious project that will advance Spain towards the future just as you have advanced our country in feminist policies. “Today, Irene, I ask you to start over with our motives intact and our strength renewed,” said Belarra, who concluded her request with a quote: “We have nothing to lose except our chains.”
In his speech, Montero claimed Podemos’s “right” to “fight and win” despite the “many difficulties.” Hence, with “reasons and hopes intact” he takes on the challenge of reviving Podemos. The main idea of the campaign already seems clear: Europe has a lot at stake and a “brave” left-wing alternative is needed in the face of the “hypocrisy” of social democracy and the greens and in the face of the “reactionary” wave of the right and far-right.
“We are not here to settle for a few crumbs in the distribution of power of the two-party system, in exchange for silence and leaving things as they are. We are here to change the rules of the game, we are here to change everything,” he told the future candidate.
Before that, Belarra has justified why they are running for office. “We are very clear that we do not refer to the political family of social-liberalism represented by the Greens [where he labels Sumar] and the PSOE,” he said. “We think that a strong left-wing political group that clearly defends peace, feminism and a different and alternative Europe to the war regime is essential. We are at a historical crossroads and at this time we cannot allow lukewarmness,” he concluded.
Montero has promised “we are not going to remain silent” and has reviewed a good number of issues on which to stand up, with recurring mentions of the conflict in Palestine, where he has demanded that there be no impunity for Israel for perpetrating a “genocide.”