from idyll to breakup in 7 acts

Now no one would say but paul churches Y Yolanda Diaz were friends. Close friends, even. They met in 2011, when he worked as an advisor to IU and she was the national coordinator of United Left. The harmony between the two did not take long to emerge and a year later Iglesias went to Galicia to help prepare Díaz’s candidacy for the presidency of the Xunta. together they built Left Side Galician Alternative, which would serve years later as a model for the configuration of United We Can. In those days a friendship was forged that survived all the internal wars that it experienced, first, Podemos and, later, United We Can.

In 2019, in the first attempt to negotiate a government of PSOE and United We Can, after Iglesias took a step back and left, the loyalty of a friendship of years emerged. He, who was still trying to form an Executive with Pedro Sanchez, warned Díaz to prepare to be a minister. She rejected the offer. She did not want to be part of the Executive if he was not there.

The talks with the socialists failed, there was an electoral repetition in November and Sánchez ended up agreeing on a two-tone government. Iglesias would be second vice president and Díaz minister of Labor. Despite the reluctance of this to enter the Government, the former purple leader opted for the Galician to occupy one of the five seats reserved in the Council of Ministers for United We Can. Now, Iglesias throws it in his face.

On March 15, 2020, Iglesias surprised with a video posted on his social networks. He left the Government to present himself as a candidate for the Community of Madrid and placed Díaz as his successor at the head of the purple wing of the Executive and candidate for the 2023 general elections. “I think she may be the first woman to preside over a Government in Spain” , said. That decision was made in three days and from her “Yolanda Diaz did not participate“, he himself explained in the book ‘Verdades a la cara’, from the Navona publishing house. “Yolanda found out at the same time as most Spaniards, on Monday, March 15, with that video,” continues Iglesias. She accepted to be vice president, but not the task of being a candidate that, today, she still does not assume.After that day, the friendship began to fracture.

The imprint that Iglesias left on the leadership of United We Can was profound, but Díaz arrived ready to remodel the space in her own style. After two months, she asked the parliamentary group to abandon the policy of the ‘tweet’ and the big headlines and bet on the “calm and tranquility“; he built a team around himself with a former leader of the ‘commons’, Joseph Vendrellas chief of staff instead of the leader of Podemos Juanma del Olmo, very close to Iglesias; and he changed the dynamics to negotiate with Sánchez. In a few months he was already talking about recovering alliances with Más País and Compromís. In those days the friendship between the two leaders began to fracture: he expected her to follow in her footsteps and she set her own course.

The following months were decisive. Díaz began to talk about expanding the purple space, of overcoming the borders of United We Can, of a listening process that he was going to start in order to build something bigger. The suspicions of Podemos, of its leaders and, specifically, of Iglesias were triggered by the fear of losing organic power. One of the turning points was the act in which Díaz participated in Valencia together with the mayor of Barcelona, ​​Ada Colau; the vice president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Mónica Oltra; and the leader of Más Madrid, Mónica García. No leader of Podemos attended.

“I do not want to be to the left of the PSOE, I give the PSOE that little corner“, Díaz said a little less than a year ago, marking the transversal nature of his project. Later, he spent weeks making it clear that his intention was to build something away from the traditional structure of the parties and Podemos and Iglesias began to claim their space. The rupture of that friendship was simmering between daily rudeness from one to the other, with the less veiled criticism of Iglesias and the more subtle messages of Díaz.

Díaz launched Sumar, the platform with which he intends to tour Spain until the end of the year, on July 8 in Madrid. At that time, the relationship of the vice president with the ministers of Podemos, Irene Montero Y Ione Belarra, had been rarefied for weeks and the failure of the coalition forged in Andalusia had tightened all the seams. Even so, the purples continued to claim the Minister of Labor as her candidate, despite the fact that she made few gestures to please them.

Ten days later, the secretary of the Organization of Podemos, Lilith Verstrynge, referred to Díaz for the first time as an “electoral ally.” He thus made it clear that they do not intend to dilute themselves in Sumar, but that they want to negotiate a coalition. Iglesias endorsed this idea that same day: “Adding and Podemos are two different things”.

Since then, the disagreements are weekly, if not daily, and behind each action of one or the other there is an attempt to position themselves in the face of the negotiations that they will have to face to form a unity list in the next general elections. The friction between Díaz and Podemos has become a background noise which, from time to time, becomes more intense. One of those moments occurred last Monday when Iglesias complained to Díaz “respect” towards his political formation, claimed the leadership that Podemos deserves and reminded the vice president that, if she is where she is, it is thanks to him.

“Yolanda seems very good to us as a candidate. So much so that we proposed her, the PCE did not propose her nor did IU propose her, Podemos proposed her, although she had a PCE and IU card. Neither did the PCE nor the Left propose her. United to be a member of the Government of Spain, neither to be a minister nor to be vice president. It was proposed by Podemos“He said on Cadena Ser. Díaz avoided entering the dispute.