The Secretary General of Podemos, Ione Belarra, has reiterated her willingness to seal agreements of confluence with IU and with territorial scope formations for the elections on November 29 in the majority of autonomous communities, but excluding Madrid and Barcelona, where she assumes a scenario of competition with Frente Amplio.
In an interview on RNE, reported by Europa Press, she defended her willingness to reach an understanding with IU for the general elections in those constituencies where "only both forces exist," explicitly citing Murcia, Cantabria, Asturias, and, "of course, Andalusia."
According to sources from the purple leadership detailed to Europa Press, the proposal to IU is limited to the constituencies of ten communities: Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Euskadi, Navarra, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Murcia, Extremadura, and Andalusia.
In parallel, contacts are maintained with territorial implantation forces in Comunidad Valenciana, Baleares, and Aragón (Compromís, Ara Més, and Chunta) with the aim of closing alliances that allow presenting unitary leftist lists in those territories. These conversations occur in the final stretch of the deadline to register coalitions before the Electoral Board, which expires on Friday.
Belarra has emphasized that regional officials of Podemos "have thrown down the gauntlet" on social media, exclusively asking to reaffirm the coalitions in those territories following the Unidas Podemos model. In those messages, there is no mention at any time of Movimiento Sumar or Frente Amplio, the new space of the minority partners of the Executive. However, the formation specifies that it is dialoguing with multiple organizations, including those integrated into Frente Amplio, although the concrete proposal focuses on IU.
The leader of Podemos has excluded the constituencies of Catalonia from this offer, where they maintain a collaboration agreement with ERC, and the case of Madrid, where the political distance with Frente Amplio is evident. Thus, she suggests that in both constituencies there may be competition between leftist candidacies, as they are very proportional seats in which, in her opinion, "leftist votes are not lost."
With this, Belarra opens the door to formulas of asymmetric agreements, a hypothesis that the former leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, had already defended, who recently stated that in Madrid and Barcelona the fragmentation on the left has a lower cost.
The purple leader acknowledges that she understands that the citizenship is "fed up" with the negotiations between parties, but she assures that her organization bets on having unitary candidacies "in all the territories where not a single leftist vote is lost," insisting on leaving Madrid and Barcelona aside.
Belarra claims Podemos' history of alliances
"Our hand is extended to sit down and see in Andalusia, all the territories where many people want to vote left and we are not giving them the opportunity," she emphasized, claiming that Podemos' trajectory is "very broad" and that the party has historically promoted the "broadest possible candidacies."
She also recalled that, even in 2023, they accepted to run with Sumar despite denouncing the "veto" of the project led by the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, to the former minister of Equality Irene Montero.
In this same line, the new coordinator of Podemos in Murcia, Víctor Egío, has appealed to IU emphasizing that they have been working together for many years and that they do not need to import "any magic formula of unity" different from the alliance they already share.
For his part, the leader of Podemos Andalucía, Nico Sguiglia, has conveyed to IU that it is essential to seal "agreements to stop the right," while the Cantabrian coordinator, Mercedes González, also demands a confluence, defending a pact "born by and for" the community.