It’s been almost a year since Yolanda Díaz Pérez, 54, decided that she would no longer lead a new left-wing candidacy in a general election. As LA RAZÓN has learned from sources familiar with Sumar’s internal movements, the second vice president of the Government and Minister of Labor made the decision “strictly by herself before summer». And yesterday he announced it in a letter that he shared on the BlueSky social network: «It is a very thoughtful decision and one that I have communicated to my loved ones, to my entire political space and to the President of the Government.». Díaz, who will continue working in the Government “to fulfill the mandate of the polls,” put an end to his time as leader of the Spanish leftthrone to which his predecessor, the former vice president of the Government, Pablo Iglesias Turrión.
The resignation of Yolanda Díaz once again leads her political space to a fratricidal war for leadership. And not only that: it puts her again before the challenge of attend together when the polls open in Spain, foreseeably in 2027. Time is beginning to tick and the main political formations of the left have been taking steps since October to mutate again: calls, meetings, calendars… Izquierda Unida, Movimiento Sumar, Más Madrid and the “commons” moved two weeks ago to make a refoundation effective.
Another name, another face in front, but same unity project; a space “open” to all those who do not exclude themselves ( Podemos ). Although the purple ones will not enter there either actively or passively. Actually, The big headache of this left-wing quartet is called Gabriel Rufián. The ERC spokesperson in Congress, who never hid his hostility towards Yolanda Díaz, has emerged as the authentic reference point of the left. His status as a Catalan independentist has not prevented him from agitating his ideological cousins and putting pressure on them with an electoral engineering plan that prevents the arrival of the PP and Vox to the Moncloa Palace.
He insists that he does not intend to lead any list. But no one escapes the fact that He is the only one who has known how to connect with citizens – not just those on the left – and with their concerns. In short, that He is the only one who knows how to reach all Spaniards, even those on the right.. Some sources bring up his parodied meetings with the activist Vito Quiles as a way of making himself known to those who do not think like him, especially among young people. In any case, Díaz’s entourage completely disconnects the vice president’s goodbye from Rufián’s rise.
The sources consulted agree that Yolanda Díaz’s greatest success is having been Minister of Labor. It was the first time in history that a member of the Workers’ Commissions, and not of the General Union of Workers, has directed it.. She herself made it clear in the letter she published online that, upon arriving in Moncloa, she thought about the embrace of the country’s workers. But the story of Yolanda Díaz is that of rise and fall of a political leader which, according to his own colleagues, «has been unable» to take the reins and sew up the wounds of a political space accustomed to stabbing.
The new mutation
The left of the PSOE is in a new phase of reconfiguration. Díaz was promoted as a candidate in 2021, when Iglesias anointed her as the natural successor of a new political movement that aimed to surpass Unidas Podemos and that mutated into Sumar, a tool that is now mutating again by order of Movimiento Sumar, Izquierda Unida, Más Madrid and the “commons”.
The left of the PSOE began to stretch last October to try to reach the polls with certain guarantees. For months now, the parties that make up Sumar have been debating how to seduce the Spanish. Everyone was clear that neither Yolanda Díaz nor Sumar were the best option. Also that It could not be repeated that a party without territorial implantation led and capitalized on the action of allabove organizations that, like Izquierda Unida, provide the bulk of the electoral structure and machinery when there are elections.
The second vice president is, above all, a pragmatic policy. Yolanda Díaz took advantage of the momentum of Podemos to land in Madrid after her time in Galician politics. Once she was anointed by Pablo Iglesias, she identified that some faces of Unidas Podemos, such as Irene Montero and Pablo Echeniquethey had no room in their plan. Díaz rejected them and that was one of the great obstacles to achieving the desired unity. With the controls in hand, Díaz turned the left of the PSOE into his private preserve. Montero was the great purge and the main reason for the distancing with Podemos, which ended up jumping ship a few months after Sánchez achieved the last investiture.
He Sumar’s failure in the last European elections It blew everything up and led Díaz to resign from the leadership of his party. He resigned to focus on the Government. But in this time He has not been able to unite his peoplewhom he has returned to the voting thresholds of Izquierda Unida. AND The PSOE needs 3 million votes that it no longer has. For this reason, Moncloa looks very favorably on Rufián. The “casting” of the left is underway. Goal 2027.
“Tension” in the face of the challenge of changing the acronym and finding another leader
The parties that are part of Sumar yesterday applauded Yolanda Díaz for her “generosity” and “coherence” for taking a step back. The most symbolic of all was the leader of Izquierda Unida, Antonio Maíllowho publicly praised the second vice president despite having been one of the most belligerent voices against her continuity. Despite the good words, the truth is that on the left there is “tension” regarding the challenge of changing the acronym and finding another leader.
The objective is to reach the polls with a political product acceptable to voters, which will once again excite and attract an electorate that they see as demobilized. But the greatest risk, these sources concede, is that the process, the internal wars and the knife attacks, ruin this persecution due to illusion. Some voices maintain that Izquierda Unida has put the term “front” on the table, in a gesture that evokes the formulas of unity of the Latin American left. Sources familiar with the conversations assume that Sumar will not be the brand with which this space participates in elections again.
The unknown now is what name they will adopt and when they will formalize the change. It also remains to be seen if the change will have consequences on the name of the parliamentary group in Congress. In certain sectors of the left they warn that the calendar is tight and that it is urgent to articulate a recognizable brand, capable of offering clarity to the electorate when the time comes to go to the polls. The left is boiling. In the PSOE they remind their members that electoral mathematics is not a winning project. «Let them forget to think that the sum multiplies the votes, “Let them remember what happened to Izquierda Unida and Podemos, who lost almost a million votes,” explains a prominent socialist deputy.
The pools follow one another and the names jump out of the drawer. Más Madrid proposed the Minister of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030, Pablo Bustinduy. He, for the moment, is ruled out. Although the socialists doubt its effectiveness: “The masses are shouting for it,” a deputy ironically says.