We can have broken in Andalusia this week for a crack that opened in Madrid. The spokesman for the state management, Pablo Fernández, made a brief mention on Monday about the Andalusian elections. “Yes, I confirm that there will be a ballot for Podemos.” The brief phrase, which had already slid its leaders for a long time, had an immediate effect 500 kilometers south.
The 'number two' and Coportavoz of Podemos Andalucía, the deputy José Manuel Jurado, announced that he left his position frustrated by the division of the left and the reluctance of the state direction to unlock the negotiation to reissue the coalition by Andalusia, of which they are already part. Jury will not go on the electoral lists for the Andalusians, scheduled for the spring of 2026, nor under the umbrella of Podemos or by Andalusia.
His coalition companions – of adding, IU and initiative of the Andalusian people – have felt it as the “loss of a reference, a value within the Parliament and on the street.” His party teammates have limited themselves to wishing for his luck in his new stage and thanking him for his years of work.
Jury, together with the Regional Coordinator of Podemos Andalucía, Raquel Martínez, had signed a manifesto in favor of the unit of the left before summer, a “desperate” message addressed to the state direction, which “disavowed” the diagnosis and proposal of the Andalusian leaders. The jury output occurs after months of tensions, the state direction for its differences on the unity strategy with the rest of the leftist political forces.
In Andalusia, the crack was born practically with the project, because from the minute one the referents of the party in this community question – and fight unsuccessfully in the internal organs – the “vertical and centralist” structure of Podemos. And they also demand without success, a “political, organic and economic autonomy” that they have never achieved. “The diagnosis of what we can and should be in Andalusia and what Andalusia itself has never shared it.
Podemos Andalucía before Podemos
Podemos entered the Spanish institutions through the Parliament of Andalusia, after the anticipated autonomous elections of 2015. Teresa Rodríguez was previously elected candidate for the presidency of the Board that Secretary General of Podemos Andalucía. And then the state leadership had problems with its leaders in the most populous community in the country, with 8.5 million inhabitants, and the one that contributes the most deputies to Congress, 61. With Rodríguez he never reached complete regional and municipal of Podemos, which was left without representation in the Andalusian Parliament.
When on Monday they heard Pablo Fernández announce that “there will be a ballot of Podemos” in Las Andaluzas, in the regional direction they understood that the decision is “to attend alone and start from scratch to rebuild the project.” “Podemos has been scalded from two left -wing coalitions, first forward Andalusia, and then by Andalusia, the unity around Yolanda Díaz who stayed with five deputies in Parliament,” warns an Andalusian leader.
In this last confluence, we can occupy three of the five seats, after a very hard negotiation with IU and add, which closed in the discount time before the Electoral Board in 2022.
The rest of the parties of the coalition have received with little surprise the resignation of jury and see it as a natural step in the distancing that has been giving between leaders such as him and the decisions of the state bodies. They believe that such a movement leaves the game very touched. “It is not that the spokesman leaves, is that it is the only picture with electoral appeal and with the ability to challenge people,” says a leader from Andalusia who believes there will be more defections. And they also point out that Jury departs from Podemos but not from the parliamentary group. “That launches a message,” they say.
We can: “Without news”
We can discard speak both in public and deprived of the situation in Andalusia and it is limited to transferring that there is no novelty about the discussion. The party that leds Belarra has always been disconnected from the milestones and deadlines that have been marked Left Unida, initiative of the Andalusian people and summar movement to articulate the new coalition of by Andalusia. In the state direction of the party, which is the one who pilots the decisions about the negotiations in the territories, handle other times to those of the rest of the formations and so far they have made deaf ears to their invitations to the unit.
In fact, the only time the general secretary of the party, Ione Belarra, spoke in public of this matter was last May and did so to mark distances with the process of Andalusia. “Who has to make a decision is not Podemos, they are the forces that are part of the war government and push a war regime,” he said in statements to the media asked at that time by the proposal of open primaries that the Communist Party of Andalusia (PCA) had transferred to the rest of the formations.
The response of Podemos for Andalusia has to do with the analysis that the party has made at the state level and that goes through the government and the parties that form it. For the Belarra Party, the formations articulated around what today is adding with their permanence in the Government the postulates of an increasingly chilling PSOE to the right, as they understand, with the strategy of rearming and without capacity or will to approve proposals of lefts within the Council of Ministers.
Under that logic, they claim, it makes little sense to ally in Andalusia with some formations that are in the same executive against which they collide daily in the state political conversation. It seems clear that, if there are no changes in IU decisions, Podemos is convinced that the best strategy is to attend alone even if that supposes a batacazo like the one they already lived in Euskadi and Galicia when they appeared against adding and were left out of those autonomous parliaments.
The Andalusian Parliament has 109 deputies, the absolute majority is in 55 seats, and currently the PP-VOX block occupies 72. The surveys that have been published maintain, by little, the absolute majority of the PP of Juan Manuel Moreno, draw a booming ultra-right, the stagnant PSOE in its electoral floor (30 deputies) and the space of the left, divided and won.
“They are thinking about their decisions from Madrid,” says an IU leader who believes that we can end up making a call to the unit when the months will pass will be only to “mud” and not with a real will to articulate a confluence. If that occurred, he says, the frame would be another but in Andalusia they believe that if we could have wanted unity, he would have already taken advantage of open roads such as Diego Cañamero's this summer, when he promoted a manifesto in favor of a joint candidacy, signed by all the leaders of the regional executive. “They will not break the state strategy in any territory,” they resign.
In any case, some leaders begin to amortized the conversation about unity with Podemos, than after movements such as jury believe that it has been even more discredited in Andalusia. And prefer to talk about a unitary call towards civil society sectors and organizations such as white tide or green tide. The deputy and spokesman for Andalusia, Immaculate Nieto, who was a candidate of the coalition in 2022, recently admitted that “the unity of the left no longer politically profitable.” “It's not something that mobilizes ours, among other things due to lack of credibility,” he said.
Several voices of the adding matches saw Andalusia as an essential first step in order to weave the unit for the general elections. And they believed that if we can remain in a consolidated space during this legislature as Andalusia the conversations by 2027 would have started well. But neither the steps given so far by the Belarra Party in that territory nor the strategy at the state level already seem a good precedent for that future coalition.
By Andalusia it follows its process
The parties of Andalusia continue with their road map although the deadlines have been delayed more than expected. The idea they handled in the spring of this year was to launch a primary process after the summer holidays, either an open choice system or an agreement between the matches with a subsequent ratification. These plans are still standing but the launch of the coalition has had to be done before the lists and even the candidate to lead.
At the time of the Initiative of the Andalusian People United, the United Left have begun their own primary processes and it is planned that in mid -October their own candidates and candidates have already defined. The idea is that in parallel the Coalition party table – which no longer attends neither green alliance nor equo- advances in the electoral program and also in the negotiations for the next instance, the final election of the candidacies of the alliance.