Last year was the most complicated in Podemos’ ten years of existence. With four deputies in Congress, without institutional power after the government left in November and relegated to the Mixed Group after breaking the coalition they had signed this summer to accompany Sumar to the elections. The party won two MEPs in the June elections and, with the decline of Yolanda Díaz’s coalition, it is experiencing a slight recovery in the polls. Aware that their deputies in the Lower House are essential for the government to be able to implement any law, they warn that their support will be conditional on the social progress made in the legislature.
Podemos now begins a new journey with the goal of June, the date on which a new Citizens’ Assembly is scheduled by statute, the fifth of the formation since its birth. The party has not yet resolved the renewal of the leadership in some territories, which should take place before the end of the year. Euskadi, Extremadura, Andalusia, Galicia, Castilla-La Mancha and La Rioja will hold assemblies in the coming months.
Last year’s electoral campaigns, in Galicia, Euskadi and Europe, served the party to outline a discourse and strategy different from that of Sumar. Although in the first two meetings the formation was seriously damaged and left without representation, 9J, with Irene Montero as candidate, won two seats that redrew the political space of the left after the general elections a year earlier.
Montero ran a campaign centered on his left-wing profile, with speeches against the war in Gaza and Ukraine and with the banners of feminism and LGTBI rights that he promoted during his term in the Ministry of Equality. “The left must rise up” is the motto that has flown over their campaign and that they have repeated ever since.
“We can begin the political journey with strength, energy and with the full conviction that it is possible to re-establish a truly transformative left in Spain, which solves the problems of citizens, such as the very high cost of housing, and promotes feminist, courageous anti-social, anti-racist and environmentalist policies,” party sources say.
Since the summer, the party has considered the “progressive legislature” to be amortized. The decisive point, they say, was the pact reached between the PSOE and the PP to renew the General Council of the Judiciary after more than five years of blockade. An agreement that, according to its leaders, buries the possibilities of a true democratic regeneration like the one promised by Pedro Sánchez after the five days of reflection he carried out in May in response to the news that affected his partner, Begoña Gómez.
“This meeting [el de Isabel Perelló como presidenta del CGPJ] “It’s a kind of whitewashing, but in reality nothing is going to change because the PP is going to continue to control the PJ and is going to block all the progressive decisions that can be made,” said the party’s organizing secretary, Pablo Fernández, this Wednesday, in an interview with Radiocable, he criticized the PSOE that, according to him, has “taken the right path and will not let go.”
For Podemos, “it is clear” that the PSOE “has renounced any “transformation” and that “its commitment is in favour of conservative policies that bring it closer to the PP rather than to the majority that invested Pedro Sánchez as president a year ago”. “The CGPJ agreement that legitimises the dirty judicial war or its proposal on immigration are good examples of this”, they say.
The party will try to take advantage of its four deputies in Congress, and this is how it explains why it cancelled in January the decree with which the government sought to promote the reform of unemployment benefits and which, according to Ione Belarra’s party, contained a reduction. It also did so in the last plenary session of July, with the decree adopted by the Executive to renew the anti-crisis shield, the set of measures aimed at mitigating the economic effects of the war in Ukraine. Then, Podemos committed to the PSOE not to eliminate the social electricity bonus that implies a reduction in the electricity bill for vulnerable consumers.
According to party sources, the commitment to diplomacy and peace in Gaza and Ukraine will continue to be important axes of the party’s discourse, especially with the presence of its political secretary, Irene Montero, in the European Parliament. There, the party has just materialized its alliance with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La Francia Insumisa and the Portuguese Left Bloc into a new political party, alongside other European formations, in a move away from the traditional left represented by the Partido de la Gauche Européenne (PIE), the European Alliance of the Left for the People and the Planet.
A new Citizens’ Assembly in sight
But the most urgent task for Podemos is to reorganize internally. After the break with Sumar, it has activated a process of leadership renewal in its main territories. Belarra has promoted the candidacies of people linked to the leadership to control the apparatus of Madrid, with Isa Serra, of the Comunitat Valenciana, with María Teresa Pérez, or of Murcia, with Javier Sánchez Serna.
At the beginning of the year, the party began a process of primaries to renew the leadership in almost half of the territories, those in which the current mandates have expired by statute but also territories in which in recent months there have been resignations or crises. Internal elections have been long overdue: Madrid, Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Aragon, Asturias, Murcia and the Canary Islands will face primaries in the coming months.
Now, he plans to do the same with another group of territories. Euskadi, Extremadura, Andalusia, Galicia, Castilla-La Mancha and La Rioja will hold regional primaries, in principle before the end of the year, to elect their new coordinators. This is the second process of renewal of the territorial leadership that Pablo Fernández faces as Secretary of Organization, a position he assumed after the surprising departure from the party of Lilith Verstrynge.
Along with the organic articulation, Podemos will also update this year its ideological theses for the new stage of the left. A process that will continue with the political conference it held about a year ago, with the approval of a document to justify its break with Sumar, and that will take its first step with the Autumn University in the short term, on October 19. 20 .
But the most important event in this sense will be the Citizens’ Assembly, the fifth in the party’s history, which, according to the statutes, must be held no more than four years after the previous one. This deadline will expire this summer and although there has been speculation in recent months about a possible advance, it seems that the dates will be maintained. At this assembly, Podemos will renew its governing bodies and approve new political, organizational and ethical documents, as well as updated statutes.
The last assembly promoted Ione Belarra to the General Secretariat, replacing Pablo Iglesias, who had officially left politics a few months ago. Four years later, the party’s situation has completely changed. The continuous resignations of leaders during the last stage have weakened the party but have also left Belarra without an apparent internal response to renew his position as party leader. But until then, there is still a long way to go in the tumultuous Spanish political arena.
