Podemos and Izquierda Unida are beginning to clarify the map for the regional and municipal elections in May. The two allied parties in Unidas Podemos have taken decisive steps in recent weeks to forge alliances that, although they will not complete the entire territory, will exceed the pacts they reached in 2019.
There are already nine closed regional agreements and the confidence that is breathed is that another three more can be announced soon. There are only two autonomous communities, Asturias and Aragón, where today there are problems that are difficult to overcome. In the other regions, with their tug of war, the path is being cleared or they continue to work hard to do so. Thus, right now there are nine closed alliances. Seven of them are to compete in coalition for both the autonomous and municipal ones: Community of Madrid, the Balearic Islands, Extremadura, the Region of Murcia, Cantabria, the Canary Islands and Navarra. The other two alliances are in Catalonia and the Basque Country, where the agreement is only for the local ones because there are no regional elections there.
The qualitative leap of all these pacts is that Podemos and IU have already far exceeded what they agreed to in 2019, since there are four regions where it is the first time that the two formations have gone hand in hand. These are Cantabria, the Canary Islands, the Region of Murcia and Navarra. This means multiplying the options to achieve representation in regional parliaments and scaring away the ghosts of being left out.
This is what happens, although it is not a new pact, in the case of the Community of Madrid, where despite the differences between the two organizations it has been assumed that the alliance had to be reissued because going alone was something like committing suicide, since the barrier of 5% of the vote to enter sentenced both if they went separately. In any case, not even together are they guaranteed to exceed that limit. That is where the national leaderships of Podemos and IU will have to turn to to press and be able to achieve it against Más Madrid.
As the agreements are being negotiated community by community, the rhythms are being uneven. And for Podemos also slow, because it is somewhat desperate with the delay of IU. The purples wanted to have everything closed in January and now they have to assume that there will be agreements that can be extended for another month. The indication of the IU management to its federations has been that they have until mid-March. It is not a strict date in itself, but it is a wake-up call.
The Valencian Community is one of the missing autonomies. There is a delay due to the different open negotiations that took place with Compromís and the parties that compose it in search of an agreement. But the attempt has collided with the fierce opposition of certain sectors. Thus, now Podemos and IU must clarify each other and they have above all work in the municipal plot, where the force led by Alberto Garzón has greater roots.
La Rioja is a peculiar case. There has been a pre-agreement between Podemos and the IU for a long time, but the leadership headed by Ione Belarra is blocking it because he rejects that, as the pact says, the regional candidacy be ceded to Henar Moreno, of the IU. Podemos wants all the head of the list in the regional elections to be his.
For its part, in Castilla-La Mancha local agreements are being reached but there is a considerable delay in general because they have tried to convene as many political forces as possible, given the demanding regional electoral law. In any case, there is a lot of confidence in that pact.
Andalusia and Castilla y León only have municipal elections. In both, the agreements that were reached in 2023 and 2022, respectively, are considered extended, but now they need to be translated into local assemblies, where it is not always so simple. In the cities of Seville, Córdoba or Jaén there are already signed agreements, while in many important towns, dialogue continues.
Especially in Andalusia, the circumstance can occur in medium and small municipalities where IU attends exclusively with its initials because Podemos simply and plainly does not exist. That also happens in Castilla-La Mancha or the Valencian Community.
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