May Day usually serves as a thermometer, year after year, to check what phase of spring the leftists are in. Entering fully into the electoral month, the five big progressive parties staged this Monday, despite their differences and aware of the setback in the polls, a clamp with the unions in order to put pressure on the employers’ association and agree on a rise in wages “imminent”.
Everything, again, with Yolanda Díaz as the main political protagonist of the day. The second vice president and Minister of Labor used May 1 of last year as a springboard with the unions after approving the labor reform and on the eve of Sumar’s first steps. This Monday, Díaz once again took advantage of the spotlight to vindicate the achievements of his department throughout the legislature and, in the midst of a battle with Podemos for the making of Sumar, defend the role of his platform, which is not running for the elections of the 28-M but yes to the generals at the end of the year.
The vice president’s distance from Podemos, a year ago and now, continues to be more than metaphorical: if in 2022 Díaz showed harmony with Mónica García, leader of Más Madrid, and shared moments of the march with the ministers Alberto Garzón (IU) and Pilar Alegría (PSOE), in this edition, continued without coinciding with Podemos, at least in the previous media attention event.
The photograph of the unit, which did not exist in 2022, finally arrived on the street, although with nuances: Irene Montero and Alejandra Jacinto, from Podemos, appeared on the left, while Díaz, Garzón, García and Rita Maestre posed on the right . All of them separated by the leaders of the PSOE, in the center of the image: María Jesús Montero, Minister of Finance, and the candidates in Madrid, Reyes Maroto and Juan Lobato. The latter were the only ones who opted for a smiling and relaxed gesture, as opposed to the seriousness shown to their left and right.
At another point in the march, Irene Montero and Yolanda Díaz, accompanied by Garzón and Enrique Santiago, spoke personally, again with a rigid expression. Montero’s shirt, with the slogan of the feminist activist Audre Lorde Your silence will not protect you, was understood as a dart at the PSOE after the approval of the yes is yes reform by the PP and with the rejection of United We Can and the majority of its partners, who denounce that with the modification “it returns to the Penal Code of the Pack” and the victims of sexual assaults are unprotected. A vote in which Díaz remained silent until the last moment about her position, in the same way that for now it is not clear how the Minister of Labor will participate in the electoral campaign of the purple ones in the face of 28-M.
Díaz, precisely, is silent about which party he will vote for in Madrid in less than a month and Podemos’s claims for him to go to his campaign remain unanswered, as happened with the proposal on Sumar that the purples sent to the leader of the project. “My vote is going to be for Alejandra Jacinto,” Montero launched this past Saturday, challenging Díaz to take sides at once.
Hence the importance of the message on the shirt of the number two of Podemos and Minister of Equality: “Death is the final silence. My silences have not protected me. Your silence will not protect you,” Lorde wrote in The Sister, the Foreigner .
“I appeal here to the employers to close as soon as possible together with the unions an Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining that allows wages to rise in our country as a whole,” demanded the Minister of Labor. “It is time to say that benefits must be moderated and wages raised,” asked Minister Alberto Garzón, in line with the unions, which are threatening to go on strike if the CEOE’s refusal persists.
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