“I want to send a message to Mariano Rajoy: tick-tock, tick-tock.” It is January 2015 and the Fonteta de València is packed, turning to Pablo Iglesias, leader of the young party Podemos. At the end of the year, the gymnasium was refilled to close the És el momento coalition campaign between the purples and Compromís for the general election, in which it was the second-most voted force. “Yes you can,” the audience sang. “It was an exciting moment of everything that could happen,” Podem’s then-leader Antonio Montiel recalls, adding: “But it was all watered down.”
Podem touched the heavens and now lives in the earthly mud brought on by the necessity of rebuilding itself. They will do this after Podemos’s final turn in Congress after leaving Sumar and starting its Mixed Group journey; This was something Podem had already experienced when its candidates were vetoed for participation, according to the formation. Sumar lists in the Valencian Community. Whether veto or agreement, the truth is that those in purple in the coalition votes in Alicante, Castelló and Valencia did not have their own names.
The Valencian federation faces its future without representation in parliament, without reaching ten councillors, and with a past that sometimes seems like a prophecy of what will happen to the entity at the state level. He entered the Cortes before Congress in 2015 and backed a socialist government long before it happened at the state level; just like sharing the same cabinet with fist and rose is a few months away.
This was not an attack from heaven, but 13 Podem MPs were decisive in forming the government of change after 20 years of PP rule in the Valencian Community. “Podemos was a disgusting thing, it knew how to understand the citizen’s unrest and offer it a representation,” recalls Montiel, who led the formation until 2017, when the battles between Pabloism and Errejonism and its transfer to the Valencian Community left it out. The fight for re-election of the general secretary.
“This is a moment of deep disappointment, we lacked the height of vision on both sides,” says the former regional MP six years later. “This was the beginning of the end,” says Montiel, not because of the defeat of the Errejonista side of which he was a part, but because “they didn’t know how to integrate the minority.” He also deplores the regions’ “lack of autonomy” in terms of both internal processes and alliances.
He was followed by Antonio Estañ, a young MP from Alicante, at the head of the party; but withdrew from the lists in the next elections. The leading actor was Rubén Martínez Dalmau. “They called me, my only condition is that all sensitivities are in agreement,” he says. He ran in 2019 and this time secured the 8 seats needed to enter the Consell. The purples, led by Iglesias, would not set foot in the Cabinet until five months later, and until a new election was held thereafter.
Dalmau, then second vice-president and Minister of Housing, remembers that time as a “winning association” with Naiara Davó as trustee of the parliamentary group. However, Pilar Lima’s victory as the party’s general secretary ended when the group’s spokesperson fell to Lima. Confronted with the leadership after eight months, Dalmau resigned from his government posts.
«They started demanding conditions from me that I could not accept, I tried to mediate with Ione Belarra [secretaria general de Podemos]But he said the party was a party, and eventually I left,” recalls the professor of Constitutional Law. With the future being known as an advantage, he adds, “Podem was a prophecy that Podemos would create a partitocracy and oligarchy within the party,” adding that Podemos “was not a party in democracy.” He states that “it is the party that is attacked the most, but there are a lot of internal party mistakes within the party”.
The “difficult” future of the brand
Dalmau was followed by Héctor Illueca, who is running for regional elections in May 2023. The result of the coalition with Esquerra Unida was poor at 3.5%, followed by the resignation of the leadership. One of the reasons pointed out by María Teresa Pérez, Podemos spokesperson from Alicante, was the lack of an alliance between the forces, in addition to the fact that the media carried out a very harsh campaign against the purples at the state level. left. “We wanted to build the unit but Comprom refused and it cost us Botànic,” he notes.
Weeks later, while Sumar’s candidacy was being discussed, Podem was not represented on the lists. He also lost his presence in the Spanish Government in Rita Bosaho, who was director general for Equal Treatment in Irene Montero’s ministry. The departure to the Mixed Group does not affect the Valencian representatives, but will allow the federation to move away from Compromís, which has become a regional reference and criticized by Pérez for having a “more vile speech” and being closer to the PSOE.
Podem’s next step will be to convene an autonomous citizens’ assembly and elect a new leadership. This will happen at an organic level because the work will be bigger at the political level. Montiel thinks this will be a “difficult” task in a situation of “polarization” and “anger on the left”, but insists that Compromís and Podem voters complement each other, “one is more identity-based, the other is more identity-based”. cross left Now she’s become a cranky left like the old IU. For Dalmau, Sumar is the “new face of the Podemos project”, so its future lies not in competition but in “cooperation”.