A year after Iglesias left the leadership, the purple formation is still looking for its place while Díaz subscribes to evanescence
On May 5, 2021, when Pablo Iglesias savored a glass of whiskey and smoked a rolling tobacco cigarette in his chalet in Galapagar to celebrate his farewell from active politics, Podemos began a journey with no other defined course than pure survival. The purple party was left an orphan of the super-leadership in which it had grown for seven years of life and launched itself to find its place with the advantage of being on the carpet of the Council of Ministers. But at that time, perhaps I did not foresee continuing a year later practically at the same point.
The minority partner of the Government even has added difficulties. In these twelve months he has verified that his greatest referent and only electoral trick, Yolanda Díaz, is not willing to commune with mill wheels; that the bleeding of votes has not been plugged, as was seen in Castilla y León and is predicted in Andalusia; and that the alternative to her participation in the Executive, an eventual rupture of the coalition, would be the worst scenario. So, in this continuous search for its place, Podemos is forced to permanently manage the dilemma and the contradiction.
The last few weeks are a clear example of this. When the echoes of the shipment of arms to Ukraine and Pedro Sánchez’s unexpected turn around Western Sahara had not yet died down, the outbreak of the ‘Pegasus case’ has suddenly intensified the already delicate balancing act. The alleged espionage operation on Catalan and Basque pro-independence leaders subjects the purples to an important stress test. They face the challenge of justifying their stay in a cabinet that would have ordered the investigations while parliamentary partners redouble their pressure and put the legislature in check.
Although in Podemos they consider that there is no danger of a hasty end to the mandate, the discomfort in this case is evident because they have always championed the fight against “the sewers of the State.” The purple leaders have joined the request for explanations and even the purging of responsibilities, demanded by the independence movement, but they avoid openly claiming the head of Margarita Robles, except for some specific voices such as her organization in Euskadi. In fact, in the leadership they diagnose that the presence of the Minister of Defense in the Executive helps them to mark her own profile and to get her head out of it with her usual scuffles with Ione Belarra.
Differences with Diaz
The management of the ‘Pegasus case’, in addition, has served as the umpteenth example of the difference in styles between Yolanda Díaz and Podemos. If in the party they talk that “you cannot wait any longer” for “heads to roll”, the second vice president adopts positions much closer to the socialist sector of the Government such as the defense of “serious and rigorous” work to clarify the facts. All while her political project remains in evanescence to the despair of the purples, who face a new electoral gap in Andalusia.
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