Yolanda Díaz proclaimed “Sumar has come to stay” in front of about 1,500 people on March 23rd, at the closing of her first assembly in Madrid. Two weeks later, at the beginning of the Basque campaign, the situation is uncertain. Facing an audience of 200 people in Vitoria, in a more serious tone than usual, the Second Vice President of the Government acknowledged this Saturday that Spain is going through a “very difficult” moment, with an “unprecedented crisis of representation”. With EH Bildu strong, which has taken on part of its more social discourse and the left to the left of the PSOE divided into two candidacies — Elkarrekin Podemos and Sumar — the viability of its project in Euskadi is up in the air. The possibility of a new electoral failure after being left out of the Galician Parliament, a trauma still too recent, threatens to greatly affect the party and undermine the leadership of the Minister of Labor just a month and a half before the European elections, a true test for Díaz’s party in this electoral cycle.
“It’s not valid to look back, we are in a constant struggle at the moment between maintaining the status quo, doing the same thing as always, or moving forward,” she insisted, distancing herself from the Socialists in one of the two only interventions she will have in the contest. After the collapse in her home region where she traveled to five times, the leader has opted for a much lower profile in Euskadi. The 40 dB poll for EL PAÍS and Cadena SER gives Sumar’s list 3% of the vote and one seat, while the formation of Ione Belarra, which, allied with the environmentalist Green Alliance, presents under the brand that obtained six seats in 2020, would reach 2.8%. The April 21st election is once again a high-level test. The elections come after a congress that has shown a lack of mobilization among left-wing citizens —only 8,179 people voted for the leadership lists— and with Díaz’s organization just beginning to take shape. The political context is also complicated, with a national public debate that does not move away from amnesty and corruption.
Yolanda Díaz, this Saturday in Vitoria along with the candidate for lehendakari of Sumar, Alba García (center), and the candidates for Guipuzkoa Andeka Larra (2nd from the left), Jon Hernández (right), for Vizcaya, and the president of Equo Carmen Muñoz (left). In addition, if the vice president forged a strong leadership based on her management at the Ministry of Labor during the pandemic and supported in the famous answers to the PP and Vox in the government control sessions in Congress —the already legendary “I will give you a fact” that she repeated this week in the Senate—, now legislative activity has slowed down and Díaz almost never has anyone asking her questions in the lower house on Wednesdays, which reduces her visibility. At the same time, the lack of projection in the Government, without budgets for this year to promote the policies they champion, complicates her position in the coalition with the PSOE, which some believe is suffocating them.
Awaiting the Catalan elections of May 12th, where polls show the resistance of the space, Sumar is now trying to change course. “Euskadi needs a new political cycle, to look to the future, to open the doors to a new time,” insisted the vice president. The leadership maintains that they do not make a national reading of any autonomous election, a way to disconnect from a hypothetical bad result in the polls, and defend their options. Sources from Sumar argue that, unlike the Galician context, in the Basque Country there is indeed a consolidated space with territorial weight that has had representation since the beginning of democracy, in the eighties with the Basque Communist Party and Euskadiko Ezkerra, a decade later with Esker Batua and recently with the different alliances around Podemos. The platform defines itself there as a “progressive, green, feminist, Basque and in defense of workers’ rights” space, seeking to be the one that shapes policies for the left and removes the PNV from power. Against the strength of the Basque left among the younger electorate —a generation for whom terrorism has not been a central element of the Basque social situation—, Sumar is doubling efforts among voters aged 30 to 55, with a greater focus on women, where they have more support. The party also entered the electoral call with a designated candidate, Alba García, much earlier than in Galicia, although their major issue is that she is the least known of all the aspirants, according to CIS.
“What most affects is what happens closest. To not miss anything, subscribe.” “Everyone who could go to EH Bildu has already gone and there is a 6% of the left [reflected in the polls] that will never support them. The key is who will get the votes from the space,” reflects a Sumar leader. In the struggle with the party founded by Pablo Iglesias, Díaz’s team sees an advantage for themselves for being the coalition inside the Government and will try to play the card of management. Among the campaign axes are the reduction of the workday and the increase in salaries, policies promoted directly by the Minister of Labor and a field in which they are comfortable. Despite criticism for a seeming decline in recent times, Ernest Urtasun, spokesman for Sumar and Minister of Culture, defended the vice president this week. “The Díaz effect is the unemployment data,” he stated on RNE the same day that the March unemployment figures were released, with 193,585 new contributors to the system and closer than ever to the record of 21 million social security affiliates.
However, despite the good performance of the labor market, no one hides their concerns about the results of an election that is played in a nationalist key, very focused on the competition between the PNV and EH Bildu, and leaving little room for anyone else. “To be or not to be. Success or failure is in achieving representation. It is true that the aspiration is minimal, but enough to speak of good results in its first elections,” sums up Itziar García Carretero, a consultant and public communication analyst, who adds that Díaz “cannot afford” to be left out. Key voices in the leftist coalition acknowledge that not entering Parliament would harm the party and prove its “weakness” so close to the European elections, where they will compete with Irene Montero’s Podemos, the most important test that will give an idea of how support is distributed on the left. “If a new failure occurs on April 21st, as in Galicia, the entire project is questioned by the model being proposed. The management with the parties, noise, and divisions resemble a Podemos 2.0 that reproduces the same mistakes but from different coordinates,” they analyze in one of the parties that make up Sumar. A worse-than-expected result in the European Parliament elections “would complicate” the path towards the second assembly, to be held in the fall, where the relationships with other political forces will be defined, they believe. Therefore, this second test in Euskadi is crucial for Díaz’s party. Ahead, two weeks to convince an electorate that already showed a certain strength in the general elections, when Sumar —with Podemos inside— obtained 11.1% of the votes in the community.
