Podemos has made a turn in its strategy at the time of reaching agreements with other formations to run in elections and has extended a hand to Izquierda Unida in Andalusia for the elections of next May 17.
The candidate of the 'purples' for the presidency of the Junta, Juan Antonio Delgado, launched this Sunday a message of conciliation towards Antonio Maíllo, leader of IU and candidate of Por Andalucía, assuring that there is still "sufficient time" to reach a confluence agreement before the regional elections.
In statements to the media in Seville, Delgado insisted that he maintains his "hand extended to Antonio Maíllo within Por Andalucía" and stressed that the objective of his party is to negotiate to have a "united, transformative and strong left", in line with what, according to him, "the Andalusian people demand".
"It's neither Maíllo, nor Juan Antonio Delgado. What the Andalusian people want is for us to go together and we have been wanting for weeks to sit down to talk, to dialogue, to converse, however you want to say it, but above all to put the interests of the Andalusian people at the center", added the candidate.
This Monday, Podemos's Organization Secretary, Pablo Fernández, has reiterated this request and has shown his party's "total outstretched hand" towards Maíllo with the horizon set on "ousting" the current Andalusian president Juanma Moreno from the Junta.
"We endorse and absolutely support the position of our candidate Juan Antonio Delgado and of the Andalusian leadership who have already expressed a total outstretched hand to Maíllo and 'Por Andalucía' to reach an agreement that allows for the removal of Moreno Bonilla from the Junta", he stated in an appearance before the media in Madrid.
Other elections that put the fragmentation of the progressive vote to the test
Fernández has thus addressed the whole of the left to the left of the PSOE at a decisive moment, in which it must be clarified whether in the Andalusian elections the fragmentation of the progressive vote will be repeated, as happened in Aragon and Castile and Leon, or if finally a path of understanding will open that makes it possible for Podemos and IU to run again jointly under the umbrella of Por Andalucía.
The deadline to register coalitions concludes next Friday, April 3 and, although different sources from the involved parties insisted that the week started without progress and that the reunification between Podemos and IU continued to be seen as very complicated, other voices admitted that there are ongoing conversations, in different areas and with various interlocutors, to assess if there are still real options for alliance, although they avoided defining these contacts as formal negotiations.
In this last scenario, the leader of Podemos has placed himself, underlining that "many people are asking for that agreement" and that, consequently, the organization, through its candidate for the Junta and the regional leadership, "is carrying out these negotiations" aimed at "ending the policies of looting, privatization and destruction of public services" that they attribute to the PP in Andalusia.
"The contacts are being carried out by our Andalusian leadership, which is the one responsible for territorial agreements, but of course from the state leadership, all the backing, all the support and we fully share that outstretched hand to Maíllo in Por Andalucía to be able to reach that agreement," Fernández insisted, pointing out that "there are a few days left" and trusting that "those conversations can be carried out."
With the extended hand
Although Delgado placed special emphasis on Sunday on issues such as public healthcare, citing the recent breast cancer screening scandal as an example of deficient management by the Andalusian Government, the truth is that there are no conditions on the table to land that agreement.
"We have an outstretched hand and we will sit down to negotiate since there is enough time to reach an agreement thinking of all Andalusians", affirmed Delgado.
Asked this Monday about those possible demands, Fernández has specified that they have not put forward any condition. "If we say that a hand is extended for an agreement to Antonio Maíllo in 'Por Andalucía', I think it is very clear that the framework is 'Por Andalucía' (...) We are waiting for the answer", he concluded.
United Left asks not to turn the discussion into "a drama"
Meanwhile, Antonio Maíllo has reiterated in recent days that the possibility of a unitary candidacy depends on Podemos's decision, considering that the purple party has it as simple as remaining within the existing confluence space in the regional parliamentary group.
In any case, he has asked not to turn the outcome of these conversations into a major conflict nor to dramatize the result. Thus, the IU leader has called not to "also make a drama" out of the presence or absence of Podemos Andalucía. "This has an easy solution: as long as no one leaves, we move forward", he affirmed at an event held in Granada last Friday.
In the previous elections, the confluence experience of Podemos and IU was uneven. Only in Extremadura, under the brand Unidas por Extremadura together with Alianza Verde, they managed to improve results, going from four to seven deputies, although their rise was conditioned by the fall of the PSOE after the indicted candidate Miguel Ángel Gallardo. In Aragón and Castilla y León, Podemos ran alone and was left out of Parliament, showing the difficulty of left-wing parties to consolidate their representation when they go divided.
The challenge now for the Andalusian left will be to avoid repeating the mistakes of previous cycles. With Moreno aspiring to a third term and with the risk of depending again on the support of Vox, the unity of the progressive space could be decisive in defining the political map of Andalusia in 2026.