Pablo Iglesias leaves the vice-presidency and runs …

From Madrid

Spanish political life, which takes nearly a week from surprise to surprise, saw another unexpected turn of the story on Monday. Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary General of Podemos Pablo Iglesias has announced his decision to abandon his current responsibilities to focus on a formally less important but deeply political goal. Will conduct an offer to try avoid what all the polls announce: another victory for the right in the Community of Madrid this would open the door to Vox for the first time in self-government.

The decision also means accelerating the times of his replacement in the management of Podemos, where he will be replaced by the current Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Yolanda Díaz, who will be appointed by Pedro Sánchez as vice-president of the government in place of Iglesias.

Spanish politics have been plunged into a whirlwind of unexpected news since last Wednesday after the Ciudadanos party, which defines itself as liberal and centrist, broke its government agreement with the Popular Party of the Community of Murcia and presented a motion of censure with the PSOE. .

Murcia is a region of less than a million and a half inhabitants and little political interest, but this rift between Ciudadanos and the PP precipitated a series of events of much greater importance on the same day. The most important took place in the Community of Madrid, with 179 municipalities including the capital, and the third most populous in Spain. Its president, the popular Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who on the left is pointed out as the Spanish incarnation of Trumpism for its irresponsible management during the pandemic and its liberal-populist discourse, he broke the government agreement with Ciudadanos and announced that he was dissolving the Assembly (regional parliament) and calling elections.

He did so knowing that the polls predict a comfortable victory and the possibility of continuing to rule supported this time not by the Citizens but by Vox, the extreme right-wing force to which the economic and social crisis caused by the pandemic and the Catalan independence movement have mounted a wave of frank electoral ascent. In the last autonomous elections in Catalonia, he managed to overtake both the PP and Ciudadanos, positioning himself as the leading force of the Spanish right in this autonomous community.

After the dissolution of the Madrid Assembly, the two main opposition forces of this Community, the PSOE and Más Madrid (the party of the co-founder of Podemos Iñigo Errejón) presented motions of censure in an attempt to avoid the advance election, since a possible alliance with Ciudadanos with the support of Podemos could give them the government. The conflict was to be settled in the courts, which ruled last Friday that the resignation of Díaz Ayuso before the motions were presented should be elections, scheduled for May 4.

In the video released by his party in which he announced his decision to go to these elections, Pablo Iglesias assured that his goal is to block the path to the far right. . “In politics you have to have the courage to fight and make room for new directions,” he said, “Madrid needs a left-wing government and I think I can be of help.”

Díaz Ayuso, who during the announcement of the electoral convocation declared that the people of Madrid had to choose “between socialism and freedom”, a dichotomy modeled on that used by Donald Trump During the last North American elections, he reacted with irony to the challenge launched by Iglesias and assured that from now on the option would be “communism or freedom”. He also claimed that the Spaniards should thank him for successfully removing the Podemos chief from the government of Pedro Sánchez.

Iglesias’ bold move has a deep reading in an internal key to the political space to the left of the PSOE. In the last regional elections, held in 2019, Unidos Podemos obtained barely 5.5% of the vote. He secured sixth place and was on the verge of becoming an extra-parliamentarian, which would have happened had he stayed below 5%. Its political space was occupied by the party of Errejón, the one which had the most votes in the municipal elections but which in the regional elections remained below 15% and was relegated to fourth place behind the PSOE, the PP and Ciudadanos. Vox, with almost 9%, also performed better than Podemos.

A further result of these characteristics in the third most populous community in Spain would have been fatal for Podemos. With your initiative, Iglesias, who invited Errejón’s party to join his candidacy, puts his opponent and former colleague before the position of joining his project or appearing as the culprit of the division of the left which can facilitate the arrival of Vox in an autonomous government.

The movement also intends to abort a possible reversal of the alliance policy of the PSOE, which begins to regard Ciudadanos, in clear electoral decline, as a more comfortable ally. If Iglesias succeeds, he will have deactivated Errejón, his main political rival in the region and who had tripled him to the vote in 2019, and will again force Sánchez to agree with him. If he fails to prevent the right from maintaining the government of the Community, a political star will have started to fade.