The investiture session has consolidated the two great poles of opposition to the future Government. The first is not surprising. Pedro Sánchez will have Alberto Núñez Feijóo on top. And the second almost doesn’t do it anymore either. Yolanda Díaz will have to deal with the tandem Ione Belarra and Irene Montero. And one of the consequences of this week’s debate is that it has only worsened the very tense relationship between Sumar and Podemos after the purple ones have not been able to intervene in the plenary session. The grievances pile up and the tear begins to be unbridgeable.
Podemos emerges from this investiture like a wounded animal and with a new realization that it has been completely “invisibilized” in Congress. The party that until May led the space of the alternative left to the PSOE has been erased from the map, without any prominence and closed in on itself on Pablo Iglesias’ YouTube and website. It has been the first major political milestone where his voice was not heard since December 2015, when he won 69 deputies in his first general elections. And before, he was already competing for attention with the PSOE in top-level debates in which he could not participate, such as the one on the state of the nation in which he put on his own show outside the Chamber to challenge Sánchez’s opposition to Mariano Rajoy. Instead, on Tuesday, the big day, he watched as Sumar, first, and then figures from IU and the commons took the floor. But they have nothing at all.
Podemos’s anger with Díaz is gigantic and they do not want to hide it in the slightest. That is why what is said in public has more value than what is said in private. Because the qualifiers are equally harsh and want to be aired. Belarra herself accuses Sumar of being embarked on an “erroneous strategy” to “silence” Podemos and an official spokesperson, Javier Sánchez Serna, reproached Sumar for being a “mere two-party parade” in the debate.
The criticism is especially hurtful after the blurred role that Sumar had in the face-to-face with Feijóo and the sarcasm with which the PP candidate indulged in his sharp responses – “humiliation” for purple sources. The coordinated strategy with the PSOE of not bringing the leaders out to confront them to make them look down on them was above all detrimental to the left-wing coalition. Díaz lost a golden opportunity although “he was dying to go out” to debate with Feijóo and Sumar was left naked with Marta Lois, who has lost Podemos’s ability to strike. The performance of the debutant spokesperson is being strongly questioned from the purple ranks, although it is also recognized as “weak” from those within it. In fact, according to the Sigma Dos survey, for Díaz’s voters, not only the socialist Óscar Puente (they rate him 7.3) or the independentist Gabriel Rufián (6.7) were better, but also those who assumed Sumar’s representation in the reply to Feijóo, Enrique Santiago (IU) and Aina Vidal (common), both rated 6.1 to Lois’ 5.9.
Some of the most popular faces of Podemos have stated that it was a mistake to allow the PSOE, with Óscar Puente, to represent the “hard” criticism of the PP and have attacked Sumar for plunging the space into “irrelevance” or “mere cosmetics” to end up adopting the role of Sánchez’s “pagafantas”.
This escalation of reproaches is just one more example of the internal trench that Podemos is digging inside and outside of Sumar and that threatens to wear down Díaz’s leadership and patience. Because Pablo Iglesias is dedicated body and soul to that strategy, and from his loudspeakers he daily attacks the leader of Sumar between revenge and the accusation that she is a leader who is an enemy of Podemos, docile and tied up by the PSOE and that she has resigned to a role “in which the socialists seem more left-wing” than Sumar’s.
Podemos’s offensive is going to be even more suffocating. Because now it’s Sánchez’s turn and we have to finalize both the government program and the distribution of the ministries. Two more focuses where you can distance yourself from Sumar and set your own profile. The purple party has been questioning the “ambition” and “bravery” of this future coalition cabinet, since they are qualities that, they warn, only they provide and not Sumar. Iglesias is presenting the coalition as a force that would leave the PSOE “free hands to do” and that would shy away from “ideological combat.” Hence, the “proposals” announced a few weeks ago by Belarra seem more aimed at anticipating what Sumar will not be able to achieve.
The section on ministries deserves express mention. Podemos demands that Irene Montero repeat as Minister of Equality and is already saying that anything other than that will mean a defeat of “feminism.” The matter is even more poisoned, because the purple ones, who know that Sánchez has Montero sentenced regardless of what Sumar thinks, demand total autonomy to determine which person in the party holds a portfolio. They rule out that it is Díaz who appoints someone with a purple card. “We can choose Podemos ministers,” say purple sources. If you do not consider that it will be Díaz’s “quota” and not yours.
Therefore, given the hypothesis that Sumar’s negotiator with the PSOE, Nacho Álvarez, could occupy a ministry, from the Iglesias website they have started a dirty campaign to discredit the “still member of Podemos” before the militancy. For, they say, agreeing to assume that position “to exclude Irene Montero” from the Government and for participating in a kind of masquerade in which Díaz would claim that he does have someone from that party. Álvarez is Podemos’ Secretary of Economy and Belarra’s number two in the Ministry of Social Rights and the Morados consider that his entry into the Executive would not represent him at all because he is aligned with Díaz and has not been appointed by them.
Podemos, in parallel, is embarking on a strategic rearmament plan that will culminate on November 4, when it will issue a new political document that will determine how it corrects its relationship with Sumar and what it does in Congress to carry out its “political autonomy.” . The horizon of the breakup is not verbalized but at the same time the question of whether the 2024 European elections are a good option to run separately from Díaz hovers over the party.
