Yolanda Díaz, about to conclude her listening process to launch Sumar and announce if she is running as a candidate, has taken advantage of an act in Seville to paraphrase Pablo Iglesias, who appointed her two years ago as leader of United We Can. “I know very well that it is difficult to add different traditions, that it is difficult to add what is different, what is different, to people who come from different political traditions. But I am clear that when we aspire to change our country, when we agree on 90% of the political program, we have to rise to the challenge that concerns us”, the second vice president of the Government claimed, internally, after a week of special tension with Podemos.
Yolanda Díaz disembarks with Sumar in Andalusia after the political thaw between IU, Podemos and Más País
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The Minister of Labor has landed in Andalusia, with the exception of the Canary Islands, the only territory that remains for her to visit in the process of listening to the one with which she is shaping her political project, after a week in which she has advanced that she is about to to announce the decision that the entire political space that she represents has been waiting for a long time: whether or not she will stand as a candidate in the general elections and if she will aspire to unite the entire left to the left of the PSOE.
????@Yolanda_Diaz_: “I know that it is difficult to add different political traditions, but if we aspire to change our country, when we agree on 90% of the program, we have to rise to the challenge and we must walk together.”#Sevilla || LIVE????https://t.co/tWsX9EdsNi pic.twitter.com/kPkPC2GkfJ
— Summer (@summer) March 19, 2023
In a speech with an almost presidential tone, at the gates of the second motion of no confidence against the Government, Yolanda Díaz has practically traced word for word a fragment of one of the speeches that the then general secretary of the party gave at an act of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, in which he appealed for unity, to put aside political differences, in pursuit of a higher objective. “It is not easy to bring together what is different, to agree with other political traditions, but if we aspire to change this country and we agree on 90% of the program, we must be tall enough to understand that we have to walk together,” he said. churches.
Those words that the former leader of Podemos uttered almost exactly four years ago, at the ceremony at the Reina Sofía to retake the political initiative after his maternity leave, shortly before the electoral campaign for the first generals of that year began. At that time, Podemos had just suffered the departure of Íñigo Errejón. A few months later, in the November electoral repetition and despite the internal rupture, the coalition with Izquierda Unida would achieve sufficient representation to put pressure on the PSOE and achieve the first coalition agreement since the return of democracy.
Yolanda Díaz wanted to use these words after a week of special tension with Podemos and when she is about to take a definitive step in her ambition to group the left under the same platform. This Monday, Sumar advanced that there would be news soon about the new stage of the listening process, focused in this case on the agreement and dialogue. And that same Monday, Podemos publicly stated its conditions: before confirming whether they will attend the act in which the second vice president communicates her decision on whether or not to run as a candidate for the general elections, they need certainty, that is, an agreement or at minus the framework lines of an agreement that defines what the formula for the general ones will be like.
In the environment of the second vice president, they rule out any agreement that does not also incorporate the other formations that Díaz aspires to group in Sumar, regionalist forces such as Compromís, Más Madrid or Alberto Rodríguez’s Drago Project, which will compete with Podemos in the next regional and municipal. So that the agreement that Podemos is asking for seems unlikely to arrive before that electoral date and therefore before the act of launching Díaz as a candidate. The exact date of this great act is not yet known, but it will be in Madrid and in a matter of days or weeks at most. This Sunday, precisely, has given more clues. “In these days I am going to make one of the most difficult decisions of my life. I am going to make a decision that I hope will serve to build a country, to give hope”, she said, about an announcement that she has come to describe as “imminent”.
Díaz has evaded pressure from Podemos to close that agreement before the act, but this week he has left some messages that can be read as a response. On Friday he participated in an act of the Ministry of Labor with Iñigo Errejón in which he asked to avoid “noise”, “forces” and “pressure”. This Sunday, as in a litany that he has been repeating in each idea, he has wanted to oppose an alternative. “Politics is about this”, he has repeated after talking about the minimum wage, public health or counteracting the policies of the right. “We want simple things. Little by little, big changes are not made overnight. We need all the minds, intelligence, hands and hearts”, Díaz has opposed.
The vice president, then, has taken the opportunity to launch that call to unity. “It doesn’t matter what you think”, she has begun. “I know well that it is difficult to add different traditions. I know very well that it is difficult to add what is different, to people who come from different political traditions. But I am clear that if we aspire to change our country, when we agree 90% on the political program, we have to rise to the challenge that concerns us ”, she said. Among the applause of the public, who rose to the tone of the vice president, she continued: “We have to walk together, let’s be Andalusian, Galician, Catalan, from Castilla y León, from Castilla-La Mancha, from anywhere, let’s add up” , she has said. “It is not just about beating the right. When someone says that, it is that she lost hope “, she has warned her later, to close:” She is going to win a country “.
Alert of the risk of the motion of censure
As in some of the territories that Yolanda Díaz has attended, such as Barcelona, the capacity of the venue where the second vice president was speaking has fallen short. The vice president has entered the Palace of Congresses in Seville applauded by the hundreds of people who lined up first thing in the morning. A good group has been left outside, unable to enter, when the auditorium, with capacity for about 1,200 people, has been filled. The minister has left for a few minutes to send a message to those people who have not been able to enter. “I am sending you a message from the heart, of encouragement, so that even if you cannot enter, you can be sure that we are here to change things. Go ahead Andalusia, add up and let’s change people’s lives ”, she claimed.
At this Sunday’s event, Díaz was accompanied on stage by five women and one man representing different sectors of society, such as health, culture, the university, Andalusianism or ecology. Pilar Távora, producer and film director; Ana Galdámez, digital rights expert; Juan Romero, co-founder of the Huelva Ecologist Coordinator; Miriam Lázaro, a designer and illustrator focused on gender studies and behavior analysis, and Ester Roca, a specialist in family medicine, have raised the problems and challenges in each of these sectors in brief interventions. “We cannot allow the health of Andalusians to be sold at the price of gold”, Roca has claimed against the privatization policies of Juan Manuel Moreno’s Health.
This confrontation with the PP has served Díaz as the common thread of his speech, in which he has outlined the lines of his approach to the motion of no confidence that will take place this week, with Ramón Tamames as the candidate of the extreme right. “Politics is not about what the PP does. The PP does not need Vox”, Díaz repeated, asking to take the opportunity to recall that “the PP proposals rebel against the Spanish constituent mandate”. “The objective of presenting this motion is not to present a government program, it is for us to leave the government,” warned Díaz, who has warned of the “risk” of using constitutional mechanisms for that purpose: “They are deteriorating democracy. This is very serious ”, he launched before proposing that this quote serve to contrast two country models.