At a crucial moment for the aspirations of the left in Spain, the political chessboard is experiencing movements in various directions. While the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, finalizes the launch of Sumar, the parties of the Turia Agreement, a “union of forces” of regional implantation, have strengthened their ties with the integration of the Drago Project in the Canary Islands – promoted by the former deputy of Podemos Alberto Rodríguez– and an act in that archipelago that has also served to highlight the internal divisions of some parties such as Más País, whose regional leader has risen up against the state decisions of Iñigo Errejón.
“Más País has pressured to fracture the space of the left in the Canary Islands and favor personal projects”
Further
Last weekend, Rodríguez’s party –former ‘number three’ of Podemos– played host in Las Palmas to his colleagues from Compromís, Más País, Chunta Aragonesista, Més por Mallorca and Verdes Equo in an act in which all these forces exhibited their alliance and that left a photo until recently unthinkable: that of Errejón and Rodríguez, facing each other after the departure of the first of Podemos, fused in an embrace that all the cameras picked up. Other parties such as the Coalition for Melilla and the Movement for Dignity and Citizenship of Ceuta were also present at the event.
There Rodríguez defended this alliance of parties that, he said, “wants to collect the illusion, hope and strength of social organizations, civil society and the social fabric of the archipelago for a candidacy with great environmental and feminist involvement.” Next to him was the spokesman for Compromís in Congress, Joan Baldoví, whose formation is perceived, due to its age and size, as a kind of glue for the rest of the organizations in this pact. “The family grows, therefore, joy. We began to be very numerous, we added territorial sensitivities, attached to the territory, ”he defended.
The Turia Agreement was born with an act in Zaragoza in May 2022, one year after the municipal and regional ones of the next 28M. The leaders of Compromís, Más País, Chunta Aragonesista, Més and Verdes Equo were there, although as events have taken place in other parts of the country, other formations have signed up to a pact that they already described as a “fraternal alliance”. ” and “equal to equal”.
As incorporations have taken place, novel images have also been produced, such as that of Rodríguez and Errejón, harshly confronted during the process that divided Podemos practically in two and ended with the departure of the second of the party that he had helped found. The image surprised, for example, the current spokesman for United We Can, Pablo Echenique, who stated that he would never have imagined both in the same political project, although he expressed the “maximum respect” for him.
Today in the Canary Islands, surrounded by old and new colleagues. Making way! ✌???? pic.twitter.com/EANZivs9ak
— Íñigo Errejón (@ierrejon) March 10, 2023
Echenique’s words are important to the extent that Yolanda Díaz has slipped on some occasion that she intends to unite the main parties to the left of the PSOE and, therefore, also of that Turia entente, around her political platform, Sumar, where it also aspires to include Podemos, from which both the leader of Más País and the leader of the Drago Project left at different times and for different reasons.
In the Compromís environment, they rule out, however, that none of the forces that are part of this agreement are currently thinking of building a platform for Yolanda Díaz and that the forces are now focused on the regional and municipal elections. “It is about claiming a political space that is to the left and has territorial sensitivities, but it has never been asserted as in places like Catalonia, the Basque Country or Galicia, where there are more deeply rooted and organized forces”, they maintain in the environment of the Valencian coalition.
In the Más País environment, he does not want to do readings either, for now, beyond May. “We will support each other and we will campaign mainly in Madrid, as well as in Valencia,” they report.
After the event in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, it is not expected that another major event will be held for all the formations, but there will be shared acts by some of the leaders of these parties even before the campaign begins. Thus, it is possible that in the coming weeks there will be an act by Baldoví with Errejón in Madrid, for example, or one by Alberto Rodríguez in Valencia. The same sources report that in these meetings common strategies and themes are shared that can be the backbone of the programs, although each force has a specific idiosyncrasy.
“We have shown that we are capable of adding to the different progressive governments,” said Baldoví. “There is much talk about the division of the left, but if Compromís were not there, there would not be a progressive government in the Valencian Community; if the CHA were not there, there would be no progressive coalition government in Aragon; if not a coalition for Melilla the same; If we had not been in Congress, the labor reform would not have come out, ”he reviewed.
Although the formations convey that their priority is the regional elections, state news permeates everything and last weekend many of the questions to the leaders addressed the future and the plans of the second vice president. “There are many of the things that the Sumar project says that sound good,” said Errejón, but stressed that in their political project they are thinking about May: “There are those who are speculating with the general elections, but there are only municipal and regional elections called and those have to be won”.
The leader of Más País, precisely, attended an event this Friday with Yolanda Díaz, organized by the Ministry of Labor, in which both exchanged thanks and some compliments. “It’s a pleasure to work with this ministry,” said Errejón. Díaz later stated: “Thanks to Íñigo and thanks to Más País. Politics is this. Politics is about talking about people’s lives, it’s not about noise, it’s not about strength or pressure”.
The photograph of the two together and the words of the leader acquire a symbolic relevance due to the moment in which they take place, at the gates of the launch of Sumar and in the same week in which Podemos has set conditions for the vice president to attend the act in Madrid in which she is expected to announce if she is running as a candidate for the general elections. If Díaz, as he has said, wants the leaders of the front line of Podemos to sit in the front row of the event, he has to reach an agreement in these days that gives Podemos guarantees.
“We understand and respect that parties like Izquierda Unida, the PCE and the Chunta Aragonesista can set their requirements. We are going to work to guarantee unity between Podemos and Sumar,” Podemos spokesman Javier Sánchez Serna said at a press conference on Monday. “We have proposed to Yolanda Díaz to close a coalition agreement now and we hope that it can be done in order to support her in presenting her candidacy,” he added.
The problem with this agreement is that it seems very difficult to achieve it at two different speeds: on the one hand, Sumar and Podemos, before the elections, and then the rest of the forces. Most likely, due to the positions expressed by the organizations that make up the Turia Agreement, with which Díaz wants to count on for his project, the negotiations for the political agreement will take place after the May elections.
It will be then when the parties begin to address the nuclear issue of a coalition of parties: the form, the name, the economic distribution, the lists. Compromís, for example, conveys that the agreement with which they have worked at the national level with Más País during this legislature seems to them the most appropriate mechanism, since it grants independence to each one and they reject that the project could be soup of acronyms.
Division in the Canary Islands
The photo of unity projected last week by the Turia act contrasts with the division that will be in the Canary Islands in the next regional elections, with at least two separate left-wing candidacies: on the one hand, Verdes Federación Verdes, Drago, Verdes Equo Canarias , which will go under the brand Drago Verdes Canarias and on the other, Podemos, Izquierda Unida and Sí se puede.
But the political division permeates even within the parties. The general coordinator of Más Canarias, Javier Navarro, who has not yet signed a firm alliance with either of the two groups, denounced in an interview in this newspaper the pressure on the part of the state leadership so that there would not be a great confluence of parties in the territory. “There are actors who in the Canary Islands obviously opt for the fracture, the rupture and to favor personal projects in the face of all this restructuring and thinking more really about the future and in Congress than in the Canary Islands. There are people who have preferred to leave the Canary Islands at the feet of the horses, thinking only of Congress”, he said.