Thursday, March 28

Yolanda Díaz encourages voting for United We Can in the Valencian Community: “The game is played here”


Yolanda Díaz has landed this Wednesday her private campaign in the Valencian Community to support the candidate of Unides Podem for the Generalitat, Héctor Illueca, who according to the majority of the polls fights not to fall below the threshold of votes that leaves them without a parliamentary presence in that region. The situation in this community is so delicate that Podemos started the campaign there and for the closure it has mobilized its founder, Pablo Iglesias. This Wednesday, the second vice president has asked the left to “concentrate the vote” on that candidacy to ensure a third Botanical Pact. “I ask you to vote with hope, that vote is called Unides Podem and that vote is called Héctor Illueca”, she said.

The key week of United We Can decant the majorities in Madrid and the Valencian Community

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“The elections are settled here. You have a huge responsibility. The game is played here, with names and surnames, those of Héctor Illueca, they are the guarantee of the Botànic, of a government of progress, that we continue to govern for the common people”, Yolanda Díaz has harangued from the Alicante capital, in the center cultural Las Cigarreras, in which close to a thousand people have gathered on the afternoon of this Wednesday. “I call for the concentration of the vote. It is clear that if we do not reach the objective, they will govern”, Díaz said to warn that if Illueca’s candidacy does not reach the 5% barrier, he will be left out of parliament and the left will have no options to keep the Government that it leads the socialist Ximo Puig together with Compromís and the coalition of the confederal space.

The second vice president has defended the effort as vice president of the Generalitat of whoever was its general director of Labor Inspection in the Ministry that she leads. “There are few examples like that of Héctor Illueca in Spain. He is, together with [la alcaldesa de Barcelona] Ada Colau, one of the few who have decided that housing is a fundamental right in our country”, he complimented her. “It is very clear that the people of Valencia want social rights, dignity, minimum wage, feminism… They want joy, another way of doing things (…) We have to defeat them politically, that vote is called Unides Podem and that vote is called Héctor Illueca. Yes, you can ”, he encouraged.

With these words, Díaz has closed a meeting in a square of enormous factual and symbolic importance. Those of Ione Belarra have in the Valencian Government one of their most important positions of power in one of the most important communities in the territory and maintaining it is essential for their expectations of the party for the future. But also, the options for the candidacy are so close that the party – and the coalition with Izquierda Unida and Alianza Verde – are risking their political survival in the region.

If they manage to exceed 5% of the votes, the legal threshold for representation, they will enter with at least seven seats and will be the key to maintaining the Botànic pact. If they do not do so, they will remain irrelevant in this community that eight years ago changed its political color in the heat of indignation over the corruption cases of the Popular Party in that region after two decades in power. The initial agreement was forged in 2015 between the PSOE and Compromís, but four years later it was revalidated with the entry of Unides Podem into it and, as a consequence, also into the Government. The political map has changed since then. Eight years ago, Podemos won 13 seats, which remained at 8 one legislature later, but at that time the decline of the PSOE made it necessary to enter the regional Executive. The latest polls now give those from Illueca just over 6%, which would guarantee their survival.

In addition, the Popular Party has trusted part of its victory on May 28 to the triumph of its initials in this square, as a way of showing, if they succeed, that they have achieved the first stage to defeat Pedro Sánchez and reach the Moncloa in the generals. For this reason, Yolanda Díaz’s speech this Wednesday has been full of references to the Popular Party. “The elections are settled here. You have a huge responsibility. The game is played here ”, said the second vice president, who has warned the party of Alberto Núñez Feijóo that they will not manage to govern. “We are going to continue governing and what comes will be better,” she said.

The Díaz campaign stop has a second symbolic reading in the territory where the hegemony of the left to the left of the PSOE is held by Compromís, which in cities like Valencia even surpasses the PSOE. In her process of building a platform of unity for the generals, Yolanda Díaz has approached the coalition with numerous gestures, such as her presence at an event in September 2021 with the former leader of that party, Mónica Oltra, who irritated Podemos. In a city like the Valencian capital, where the entry of United We Can seems more difficult and does not condition so much the possibilities of maintaining a progressive government, Díaz has chosen to wrap up Ribó in an act that, like his entire campaign, will also be measured and in which He will also be photographed with the purple candidate, Pilar Lima.

Díaz’s passage through Alicante is part of that list of places where the vice president has had to do a difficult balancing act. On April 2, at the launch of Sumar, the presence of Compromís contrasted with the sit-in of Podemos and left a photo that, as in Madrid, complicated the design of their campaign: how to support candidates who are outside their space political but at the same time have shown optimism about the project that is designing for the generals. Finally, Díaz has supported Illueca this Wednesday and tomorrow, she will give a walk in which they will be, among other leaders, the mayor of Valencia and leader of Compromís in that city, Joan Ribó.

Until now, Yolanda Díaz had not defended the acronym of United We Can in territories with a competitor to the left who had also winked at Sumar. The other difficult territory in this sense was Madrid. The minister arranged it with a walk in the San Isidro meadow with much more time for Más Madrid than for Unidas Podemos and a second act in Rivas, where she supported the candidacy led by Izquierda Unida but in which are also those of Mónica García and from which Podemos left at the last minute. Díaz has completed his campaign in cities or territories where the left had achieved an almost total if not complete unity, such as Navarra, Euskadi, Málaga or Seville (in the latter two there is a broad confluence but without Adelante Andalucía) and Catalaunya, where he has been for two times and will also attend the closing ceremony of the campaign of the mayoress of Barcelona, ​​Ada Colau.



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