{"id":968622,"date":"2023-01-25T09:33:58","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T09:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/01\/spain-left-sumar-yolanda-diaz-labor-organization-unity\/"},"modified":"2023-01-25T09:55:58","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T09:55:58","slug":"spains-left-badly-needs-to-join-its-forces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/01\/25\/spains-left-badly-needs-to-join-its-forces\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain\u2019s Left Badly Needs to Join Its Forces"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Labor minister Yolanda D\u00edaz is Spain\u2019s most popular politician \u2014 and her new Sumar electoral vehicle promises to greatly expand the Left\u2019s support. But the project remains marred by infighting, with strained relations between D\u00edaz and her Podemos allies.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Yolanda D\u00edaz during the presentation of the working coordinators of Sumar in Madrid, Spain on September 23, 2022. (A. Perez Meca \/ Europa Press via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

\u201cTo defeat the Right [electorally] is relatively easy but we want to change people\u2019s lives and to win a new country.” So said Spanish labor minister Yolanda D\u00edaz<\/a> as polling showed her proposed left-unity platform Sumar<\/a> making major gains ahead of the general election planned for later in 2023. In a December 5 poll for the Prisa Group, her new electoral vehicle was projected to secure 18.7 percent of the vote and fifty-nine seats \u2014 that is, twenty more MPs than the combined 2019 electoral result for Unidas Podemos alliance and former ally M\u00e1s Pa\u00eds.<\/p>\n

Diaz took over from Podemos founder Pablo Iglesias as deputy prime minister in mid-2021. Since then, she has repeatedly polled<\/a> as Spain\u2019s most popular political leader \u2014 outperforming even Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez, who leads the center-left Socialists (PSOE). Combining a clear institutional profile with her close links to the country\u2019s trade unions, she has sought to reorientate the radical left as an alternative governing force to PSOE, while contesting its claim to be Spain\u2019s natural party of labor. \u201cYolanda is a reformist social democrat but with the virtue that she does what she says \u2014 prioritizing concrete gains for working-class people and defending their living standards,\u201d Unidas Podemos MP Txema Guijarro tells Jacobin<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Sumar’s polling suggests that a reorganized and united left could come out of its grueling term as PSOE’s junior partner in a stronger position electorally. This would be an impressive achievement given the travails of the last four years. Excluded from the major ministries of state, Unidas Podemos and its five ministers have had to accept a series of unpalatable decisions in foreign, defense, and security policy. They have focused their efforts on social reforms and a more progressive response to the pandemic and subsequent cost-of-living crisis \u2014 against PSOE resistance. In recent months, they have forced a series of concessions, with S\u00e1nchez accepting the Left’s emergency proposals to slash transport fares (including making commuter and medium-distance trains free for at least sixteen months), introducing inflation-level increases in key welfare programs, and imposing a temporary wealth tax and moderate windfall taxes on the energy giants and the banks.<\/p>\n

But, worryingly, the same Prisa poll also offers an alternative scenario where left unity fails to materialize. We learn that running separate electoral lists could cost the Left up to twenty-five seats. Given that Sumar\u2019s rollout has become increasingly bogged-down in renewed factionalism, revolving around a high-stakes standoff between D\u00edaz and the Podemos leadership, such a scenario cannot be ruled out. Indeed, rising tensions have seen a series of routine tactical disputes over the last year turn into near existential crises \u2014 bringing the current Unidas Podemos parliamentary alliance to the point of a definitive split in October. With local and regional elections scheduled for May, time is running out for the Left to make good on the promise inherent in Sumar\u2019s name, to unite and join together.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

A New Project<\/h2>\n \n

Despite these tensions, D\u00edaz’s team see Sumar’s polling surge as vindicating their path to left unity through a much broader process of renewal and reorganization rather than a simple coalition of existing parties. At Sumar’s inaugural event<\/a> in Madrid last July, she did not share the stage with other political leaders but rather with activists, trade unionists, and members of civic groups as she underscored how Sumar would be a \u201ccitizens\u2019 movement\u201d seeking to \u201cconstruct a project for the country for the coming decade.\u201d Sumar\u2019s initial phase of development has involved a series of such public events, which have taken place without formal involvement from the existing parties and have been conceived as a \u201clistening process\u201d between D\u00edaz and civil society. At the same time, thirty-five expert groups are working in parallel on the platform\u2019s longer-term program of radical reform, the guiding principles of which were unveiled on January 12.<\/p>\n