Last weekend was more intense than usual for two of the formations of the so-called alternative left. Podemos celebrated its Fall Universitya space for annual reflection that the party uses, among other purposes, to mark its roadmap and establish its strategic lines.
Izquierda Unida held a meeting of its Federal Coordinator (the highest body between assemblies) with a similar objective: to resituate training in the political scenario and chart a path to follow for the next cycle.
On Monday, the readings of both forums could not be more different and, in certain aspects, distant. On Saturday, part of the reflections that the Executive led by Antonio Maíllo proposed to the debate in the Coordinator of the party, which was none other than the unity of the left.
In the political report debated and approved by this body, IU’s intention to work to achieve a single candidacy of the left facing the next electoral cycle, a bet that Maíllo himself openly defended this Monday during an interview.
However, the Fall Uni of Podemos proceeded according to the planned plan, as a forum that Belarra took advantage of to increase the pressure on Pedro Sánchez and the Government conditioning the support of its four deputies to the General State Budgets to a rupture of relations between Spain and Israel and a public intervention of the rental prices.
The unity “in the concrete” and the “personal hatred”
Also on Monday, like IU, the purple formation continued the framework it proposed over the weekend, with the announcement by Belarra that it would submit to the consultation of your militancy if he finally used these two conditions as red lines before the Executive in the budget negotiation.
“In this context, in which it is evident that without pressure the PSOE is far from acting as the people of our country expect, our organization must exercise its power to the maximum and that the Government respects the mandate of 23J”, defended the general secretary of Podemos when she announced the consultation.
That each party established its own frameworks does not mean that they did not interact at any time. No position on the Podemos Executive has, for the moment, evaluated Maíllo’s proposal publicly, but they did appeal to this call, without mentioning the leader of IU, the founder of Podemos, former vice president of the Government and director of Canal Red , Pablo Iglesiasduring an event at the Autumn University.
Iglesias: “Before making appeals for unity, you must make it very clear who you are with”
“I don’t know if it doesn’t strike you that some of those who lately, in view of the failure of a political project that was designed to make Podemos disappear (in reference to Sumar), they repeat the word unity many times but they never say the word Ferreras,” said Iglesias.
The former leader of the purple formation wondered if “in the central committee they have been prohibited from saying the word Ferreras or they have been prohibited from saying that La Sexta is a corrupt media outlet run by a corrupt person who has practiced the dirty war to put an end to a formation.” policy. Before making appeals to the unityou have to make it very clear who you are with, if you are going to take advantage of the spaces opened by the corrupt or if you want to build something by saying the proper names of power, corruption and lawfare in Spain”.
Furthermore, the former vice president appealed directly to the call for unity and defended that if the deputies of the left in Congress “have a vocation for unity They must support Podemos’ demands to Sánchez“in budgetary matters.
Privately, the purple formation has long shunned the framework of unity. “We took a lot of risks taking the course we took because at that time it was necessary (in reference to the departure of Podemos from the parliamentary group and the Sumar coalition), we have closed that page and now we have other priorities, while we see how the facts prove us right that what was intended was a Government without Podemos that would leave Sánchez’s hands free and the PSOE,” comment voices from the party when asked about the issue of left-wing unity.
Just a few weeks ago, at the PCE Festival, a debate on the unity of the lefta debate in which Podemos was scheduled to participate, and which IU saw as an important opportunity to address this issue. So much so, that Maíllo himself was the party’s speaker in this forum. However, even though it was in the forecast, Podemos finally did not attend the debate due, they said, to an unforeseen event.
The Andalusian example
However, there have been some discreet contacts between Podemos and Izquierda Unida at various levels, even at the state level, contacts that Maíllo himself pointed out in the political report presented to the Federal Coordinating Committee when stating that IU had “established relations with all the organizations that were part of Sumar el’s candidacy.” 23J 2023, including Podemos”.
In AndalusiaIn addition, both groups work in a confluence process facing the upcoming regional elections with a desire for understanding, a situation that some figures attribute, among other elements, to the fact that there is no Sumar as a unifying coalition, but rather the brand and the project revolve around Por Andalucía.
Maíllo: “A country project cannot be conditioned by personal hatred”
this monday Maíllo was asked about Iglesias’ words about the Sumar deputies, the unity and Podemos’s demands for the Budgets. The Andalusian leader took up the gauntlet and assured that his party has always been clear about its position in favor of breaking relations with Israel and intervening in the rental market, and he trusted that “the Podemos colleagues will support the improvements of the public health portfolio with the oral health, contact lenses and glassesor in housing policy in the fight against speculation”, Sumar’s proposals in the Budget negotiation.
The Andalusian leader went further and defended that “in concrete things we can find ourselvesand we can start there, by meeting in the processing of the Budgets”.
However, the IU leader recalled that concrete and programmatic issues have rarely been “an obstacle” to the unity of the left, and that the personal conflicts and quarrels (like those that occurred between the leaders of Podemos and those of Sumar), too many times conditioned the processes of confluence.
“A country project cannot be conditioned by personal hatred,” he warned, and defended the “democratic method, with primaries, a consensual census and without crossed vetoes” as the “only condition of possibility” for a real and effective unity. “We renounce leading anything that is led from the popular will,” he insisted.
For now, IU’s call for left-wing unity has not been responded to with the best of enthusiasm by a Podemos that, at least publicly, has set another short-term priority.
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