I hangover from the elections regional and municipal in Spain who gave the victory to popular and who forced the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, to announce early elections, continue. Tuesday 30 May will go down in history as the day when one party was born in the country’s political system and another died. To the left summer publicly announced the constitution of the party at 1.47 pm; just under an hour later, at 2.30 pm, the leadership of the centrist Ciudadanos party announced that they would not stand for the general elections on 23 July.
Sumar, the only solution to the left of the PSOE
Twenty-four hours after Sánchez’s announcement, a tweet officially decreed the birth of a new party, the add movementheaded by the Minister of Labour, Yolanda Diaz: “We are ready for the elections”. The goal of Sumar, whose establishment began with the presentation of Madrid in April, it is to rebuild the unity of the political space a left of the Psoefor years fragmented into different formations, and which, as we have seen, has achieved poor results in the last election. Until now Left united, Fair Green e Green Alliance have announced their intention to merge into Sumar. It has also been added More Madrid, Catalonia in Common and negotiations with the Valencian party took place commitment.
The question mark continues to be united We can. In recent months, the two formations have sought dialogue, which was then suspended. Officially, what has divided them are two claims by Podemos: the request for open primaries (which Díaz had excluding) and the need for a agreement on the weight that they would have different formations gathered in Sumar. The intention was to reopen the negotiations in June, but Sánchez’s announcement upset the plans and a race against time. Primaries are no longer an option, as electoral law provides for a 10-day time limit from the election call to register coalitions.
Javier Lorenteprofessor of Political Sciences of theRey Juan Carlos Universityexplains that at this time neither We can neither summer they have an edge in the negotiation process. “Podemos wants to have Sumar una inside bigger presence compared to what it can bring with the vote of its electors and this generates certainty mistrust. At the same time the parties who supported Yolanda Diaz (and for which the minister asked to vote in the last elections), how In common we can, Compromise e More Madrid they have not achieved brilliant results”.
However, Podemos and Sumar are forced to understand each other, given that the Spanish electoral law penalizes the parties they get a result lower than 10-12%. Last Sunday’s rallies demonstrated that the fragmentation of the progressive space can be disastrous, and Podemos was one of the main victims. According to Lorente in these elections there was a cross-passing of votes: hypothesizes that the Psoe has lost support to the right and got others from We canwhose voters opted for the abstention or for alternatives of left as regionalist or nationalist parties. The expert also identifies two reasons that led to the debacle. “Firstly, Podemos was born in a context that no longer exists, the economic crisis and the great recession of 2010. Little by little it lost its meaning and what remains is United Left and the Match communist, who have a small but solid electoral space. Secondly, it is a match ‘decapitalised‘, who lost leaders such as Iñigo Rejon and important squares such as Madrid“, he claims.
Ciudadanos, the last days of a liberal party
While the announcement of the electoral advance took all the formations by surprise, the failure Of citizens it had been announced for some time. Tuesday, after an extraordinary meeting, Adrian vazquezgeneral secretary, announced the party’s decision to do not compete in the early elections of 23 July: “The message from the municipal and regional councils was clear. The Spaniards do not see us as a transformative political alternative for our country. But we don’t give up, we know that today there is no electoral space but a political one for liberal ideas. We will work for a stronger projectmore attractive electorally”.
In just four years Ciudadanos has grown to be the third national party, with a few votes away from the PP, not to stand in the elections. For Lorente there are two moments that marked the history of Ciudadanos and led to his political death. The first, the general elections of 2019. In April there was a vote and the formation, then led by the Catalan lawyer Albert Rivera, obtained 57 seats, becoming the third most voted force after Psoe and Pp. However, the stubbornness in the don’t want to support a government of the most voted candidate, Pedro Sanchezforced to return to elections in November: in a few months, citizens it went from 57 to 10 seats. The “second mortal wound”, as the political scientist of the Rey Juan Carlos defines it, arrived in 2021, when in the early elections of the Community of Madrid the party stayed outside the regional assembly.
The decision not to contribute to the Politics probably scores the fine of Citizens. “A party that does not present itself at the general elections is a party that is worthless,” says Lorente. Sunday’s electoral disaster can be explained as a result of a series of wrong choices of the party but it is also a constant in the country’s political history. “In Spain i centrist parties do not work. There Cds (Democratic and Social Center) Of Adolfo Suarez has become extinct, as well as the UPyD (Union Progress and Democracy) and now citizens. Spain is a country with a definite blockade policy. When a party claims to be in the centre, but always supports a party like the PP, what is it for?”, says Lorente.
Also, as in the case of We canAlso citizens it was born in a different political and social context with claims that are no longer current. citizens presented itself as an alternative to the traditional parties, denouncing the corruption among the ranks of the popular and, above all, theCatalan independence. “Once the judgments on the corruption cases of the PP the theme disappears from the debate. And the process it is no longer a concern. The party tried to conquer the center-right space occupied by the popular and eventually lost credibility as a center party. For these reasons, Lorente considers it extremely difficult for Ciudadanos to be able to re-found itself, because it is political space to which it aspires it closed.