Podemos continues to increase pressure against the Government. For months the party has diagnosed that the progressive legislature has died and for this it is based on the pact that the PSOE signed with the PP to renew the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). But this week the formation has taken a discursive leap on an issue with which the right is trying to harm Pedro Sánchez: the Koldo case. It is implausible, they maintain, that the president did not know anything about this corruption.
The change in tone coincides with a new report from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard that leaves the former Minister of Transport and former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, very close to the accusation in the case investigated by the Court National. This report attributes to him a “relevant and responsible role” in the plot that was developed in the department that he directed between 2020 and 2021 and dismantles the explanations that he has been providing in the media since the outbreak of the case.
Podemos was already very critical of the PSOE when the first news about the case began to come to light. Then its leaders criticized that Ábalos had become a “scapegoat” and asked for a thorough investigation to clarify how far this alleged corruption plot went. “The PSOE, for its own good, must be the first to investigate all the contracts that were made,” co-spokesperson Isa Serra said in a press conference on February 26.
But this Monday, after the UCO report, the party went a little further and spoke expressly about Pedro Sánchez. “If there were corrupt policies that can be linked to Ábalos, it is hardly credible that they could be carried out without President Sánchez and the rest of the party having knowledge,” said the Secretary of Organization, Pablo Fernández, in a press conference. “The corruption of the PP was not alien to M. Rajoy and it is unlikely that the corruption of the Koldo case was alien to Pedro Sánchez,” he added.
The mention of PP corruption is not accidental. It has to do with the analysis carried out in the party led by Ione Belarra on a reinforcement of the two-party system after the last elections and above all with the steps that, they argue, the PSOE has taken in recent months.
“While we see how the umpteenth case against Podemos is filed, Neurona once again festers the corruption of the two-party system. The PSOE and the PP think that the institutions are theirs and we cannot allow it,” Belarra wrote this Monday in a message on her social networks.
In the same way he spoke this Wednesday through a message on social network (formerly Twitter) the political secretary and MEP of the party Irene Montero, who has equated the corruption case that affects the former Minister of Transport, José Luis Ábalos, and his former advisor, Koldo García, with what she has called the “Ayuso case” and He has assured that both demonstrate that the two-party system “does not know how to govern without corruption.”
Montero, who recalled that the events occurred in “the worst moments” of the health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, has urged the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to take responsibility for returning “every public euro stolen” from the Spanish.
The parliamentary spokesperson, Javier Sánchez Serna, also insisted on the same line this Tuesday. “Corruption has always been a characteristic of the bipartisan system and, frankly, it is difficult to believe that these plots can be operated without any alarm going off in the ministry on duty, in the parliamentary group or in the party. It is difficult for one person to do dirty business, sustained over time, in the administration, without involving many others, many other people,” he said, at a press conference in Congress.
Sánchez Serna ruled out in that same intervention that his party was going to support a possible motion of censure promoted by Alberto Núñez Feijóo like the one that promoted Pedro Sánchez to La Moncloa precisely thanks to the management of Podemos and after the ruling in the case was known. Gürtel who condemned the PP as a lucrative participant. “They are not going to find us there,” said the Podemos spokesperson in Congress.
But what he did make clear is that his party is not part of the so-called investiture bloc. “We are not a partner of the Government. We supported an investiture because the alternative was worse. But from that point on, the Government has not wanted to negotiate with Podemos many things and many reforms that were necessary,” he said. Podemos’s votes are necessary so that the Executive can carry out any initiative without depending on the PP.
Belarra’s party began the legislature within the Sumar coalition, with which it broke almost a year ago, in December 2023. Since then, its four deputies – there were five until the resignation of Lilith Verstrynge at the beginning of the year – have unmarked on several occasions from some Government measures, such as in the decree that sought the approval of a new unemployment benefit. On other occasions they have managed to introduce changes after negotiating them with the Executive, such as in the parity law.
In recent months, Podemos has confronted the Government for, as they criticize, its lukewarmness against Israel or the lack of measures to stop the increase in rental prices. This Monday the party called for the dismissal of the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, for her “calamitous inaction” regarding the problem. “The Government has to choose and what it has chosen so far is to be on the side of the rentiers. To count on our group, he has to make a 180-degree turn,” Sánchez Serna warned this Tuesday.
But in Podemos they return again and again to what they consider a before and after in the legislature, the pact that the PSOE sealed with the PP to renew the General Council of the Judiciary. “There is an important date which is this past summer with the pact to distribute judicial power without anything changing and without those responsible for lawfare and the persecution of democratic forces like Podemos to take a step back,” said the parliamentary spokesperson.
That pact went against the proposal that the party already launched when it was part of the Government to change the parliamentary majorities necessary for the renewal of the governing body of the judges. A path that in his opinion would have served to democratize Justice. The PSOE’s preference for negotiating the renewal with the main opposition party, on the other hand, gave those in Belarra arguments to announce the death of the progressive legislature and a return to the two-party system.
Podemos has deepened this political strategy after opening a solo path within the left, first with the break with Sumar and then with the decision to run in the European elections with its own brand for the first time since 2014. Some elections on 9 June that gave some air to the formation, with the entry of Irene Montero and Isa Serra in the European Parliament.
The party continues to put aside the unity debate for the moment and is focused on reinforcing identity with the ‘Autumn Uni’ this weekend in Madrid as the main milestone. Like every year, the event will have different political debate tables and a central event with the voice of its main references. This year, former Labor leader and British MP Jeremy Corbyn and Palestinian activist and MEP for Rebellious France Rima Hassan will participate in that main rally on Saturday.
Renewal of your regional addresses
Podemos will hold an organic process this fall to renew the autonomous directorates that were pending last year: Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia, Castilla-La Mancha and Euskadi. They are territories in which the current mandates expired after the four years established by the statutes or in which the management had resigned, as in Galicia, with Borja San Ramón. The process will not cover Aragon, where the management resigned en masse a few weeks ago.
“We can face these processes with the conviction that it is the militants who have to choose the leadership of the organization, as has happened since the founding of the party in 2014. Podemos was a pioneer in our country in launching primaries and to consult with its militancy about the relevant decisions that it has faced throughout its ten years of life,” sources from the party have transferred to announce the start of the process, which will last between the 4th and the 29th of November.
One of those directions is especially important since it could be that territory that ends the electoral pause that is expected to last about two years. In Andalusia, elections are scheduled for June 2026, although no one rules out that Juanma Moreno could force an advance. There Podemos is headed by deputy Martina Velarde, from the hard core of the state leadership. And one of the important decisions that the leadership will face in the face of these elections is whether to maintain its alliance with Por Andalucía, where Sumar’s parties are located. The relationship of that coalition, very turbulent in its first months of life, has improved with the progress of the legislature.
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