Yolanda Díaz postpones the “listening” process, a step prior to her electoral plan

© EFE
Yolanda Díaz, Second Vice President and Minister of Labor and Social Economy.

It will not be this month of January when the second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Diaz, start the “listening process” with citizens, as he had planned to initiate, a step that he wants to take before launching to promote an eventual electoral candidacy to the left of the PSOE.

At the moment, sources in their environment have assured, that “listening process” is postponed without specifying another date for Yolanda Díaz to start laying the foundations of this transversal project and without acronyms that might be a powerful rival for Pedro Sanchez in 2023 if she finally leads it.

Now it seems that the priority of the Minister of Labor is to validate the labor reform decree in Congress, whose support has been complicated by the problems that the investiture partners are putting on him, apart from other challenges in his department and, therefore, he does not feel pressured by the two appointments that there are this year with the polls.

The most immediate and by surprise, on February 13 in Castilla y León, to which for the first time they will attend together United Left Y We can and also with Alianza Verde, the new ecologist party of Juantxo López de Uralde.

They also work in a plural and open formula, that includes civil society, in line with the approach of Díaz, who does not have in his plans to present his project in Castile and Leon but neither in Andalusia, where the electoral horizon has not yet been specified, but which, it seems, will not be before June.

In any case, sources from Podemos believe that the second vice president will not present its initiative until spring, but they do think that he will support the candidates of United We Can who attend the regional elections.

Possible confluences with other parties

On other possible confluences in these two electoral calls and in relation to the movements that are taking place in the so-called emptied Spain, the same sources explain that they do not see it as very feasible to be able to converge because, among other things, they point out that these parties are not interested in a confluence in which there is no common denominator.

For example, with regard to Andalusian women, there have been contacts with the Levanta Jaén platformOther purple sources point out, but they have doubts regarding how it might fit into a coalition with United We Can because this platform, they say, is an amalgam of left and right.

They are also talking to Andalusians Get up (Add to More Country, Andalucía Por Sí and Iniciativa del Pueblo Andaluz because they want to avoid at all costs the atomization that exists to the left of the Socialists and that might make them lose, according to their forecasts, between seven and eight seats.

With whom They give up an understanding is with Teresa Rodríguez because, apart from the mutual aversion they have had since the traumatic breakup in 2020, they insist that the anti-capitalist leader maintains a red line of not agreeing with the PSOE.

For now, on the electoral board that the latest polls reflect, the purple ones would save the furniture in Castilla y León by keeping the two attorneys that they got in the 2019 regional elections, in which they gave themselves a great bump by leaving eight seats.

In Andalusia it looks worse for them due to the fragmentation they have suffered, since the Adelante Andalucía brand, with which they participated in the December 2018 elections and obtained 17 seats, has been broken into three formations.

Teresa Rodríguez, who has kept the original name (Adelante Andalucía), would obtain between two and three deputies, according to the Andalusian barometer of December 2021; United We might reach 12, and Andalusians Levantaos would get one.