Spain Notes, Dec 6: Podemos-Sumar implodes

1/ The Podemos-Sumar agreement on the alt-, far-, further-left in Spain has fallen apart only months after it was put together for the July general election.

2/ Podemos announced it was taking its MPs out of the Sumar group in parliament and going to the “mixed group”.

3/ The move has already been registered in parliament (image above).

4/ The Podemos leader in Madrid left the party.

5/ The Podemos leader in Extremadura left the party.

6/ The Podemos leader in Catalonia left the party.

7/ “Podemos came to Spanish politics to change everything”, wrote Podemos leader Ione Belarra: “Today, with renewed strength and our convictions intact, we make a difficult but essential decision to continue transforming our country. We need a feminist, ecological and transformative left. Yes we can.”

8/ Podemos founder Pablo Iglesias wrote on his CanalRed website that: “the PSOE must now respect the purple party and negotiate all of the laws that are tabled in parliament with them, including the budget, for which the five Podemos MPs are as essential as the five PNV (Basque nationalist) MPs”.

9/ Sumar said it was sorry to see them go but that they had had no idea Podemos was about to jump ship, insisting that they found out via the media.

10/ The move was, they added, “a flagrant breach of the coalition agreement” that Podemos had signed up to before the summer, namely to remain as a whole throughout the entire parliament: “This is disloyal to the three million people who voted for Sumar”.

11/ There are also reports this is partly about getting more money by moving to the mixed group.

12/ Manuel Jabois, Cadena SER: "It would be nice to know one day why Podemos members had to vote to choose which house their leader should live in and have not had to vote to know what their party has to do in parliament about Sumar."

13/ Antonio Maestre: “In politics, there is a deadly mistake that cannot be made. Conveying to people that you are not trustworthy, that their vote is not safe if they give it to you. Podemos ran in coalition with Sumar. People voted for Sumar and Podemos has broken that contract with voters. It's a fatal mistake. The penultimate one”.

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