The left seeks to raise spirits in the face of the next electoral events and the four last Saturday, together with the debate encouraged by Gabriel Rufián for an understanding with the nationalist forces, has served to mobilize, at least for the moment, its own. At an informative breakfast organized this Monday by Nueva Economía Fórum, the federal coordinator of Izquierda Unida (IU), Antonio Maíllo, warned of the danger of being trapped in “melancholy and marginality”, a reference to all those who, like Podemos, refuse to join the project for now. “Perhaps one of the great lessons that we as IU have also learned is that whoever does not make a characterization of reality, not the one you like, but the one that is, is left out of the loop and cornered, possibly, forever.”
Without entering into confrontation with him, the Secretary of Organization of the Belarra party, Pablo Fernández, has responded that there is “too much talk about who and little about what for” these days, although he has celebrated that the interest aroused by the two events last week show that . Sources from the parties of the new coalition promoted by IU, Más Madrid, Comunes and Movimiento Sumar, have also confirmed that they will organize two events in Andalusia (between March and April) and in Catalonia to present the alliance in these two territories and continue calling for the mobilization of the electorate.
Saturday’s event at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, before about 600 supporters, exceeded the expectations of the organizers, also encouraged by the debate opened by Rufián and the Más Madrid deputy Emilio Delgado, just three days before.
Maíllo, candidate for the Presidency of the Board with the left-wing coalition For Andalucía in which Podemos and Teresa Rodríguez’s party are not included, has once again advocated this Monday for leaving for later the debate on the political leadership of the new alliance presented on Saturday, with the great doubt of Yolanda Díaz, absent from that event. The leader has stated that the election of the head of the list must be the “subsequent result of the realization of the political project”, giving “credibility” along the way and “without distortions”. “Here, everyone is essential just as we are insufficient alone. And Yolanda will decide what she wants to be, she is an asset, of course, an excellent Minister of Labor, too. I am in favor of that if there is consensus, great. If not, a democratic model [para la elección del candidato]he has defended. After having been one of the leaders who have openly requested a renewal of the referents in this new stage, that is, that the vice president does not repeat herself, Maíllo wanted to smooth things over this Monday by claiming her figure as “the best Minister of Labor in history.”
The IU leader has also pointed out that the space has learned from the “mistakes of the last 10 years”, sustained by very strong leaderships that, when they have collapsed, have dragged down the project. And he has vindicated the “broken” glass ceilings these years, such as the arrival of the PCE coalition government. At this point, he has warned of the “temptations” to overthrow him. “You have to listen a lot to Aznar, who doesn’t just talk,” he added.
Regarding the new coalition, Saturday’s event was, in his opinion, the “starting shot of something that, by starting from the foundations, guarantees a friendly space, which can make others feel that they should join in and be co-protagonists.” In his words, it is an “irreversible process, which gives certainty and security to millions of workers; a process of common sense, because only through unity can we be relevant in the country; and with the conviction that the extreme right is not confronted by raising abstract flags or incurring fear, but with a project that attacks the basis of social inequality that causes there to be sectors that adhere to the reactionaries.”
Along these lines, Maíllo has defended “creative formulas to make solid, permanent and irreversible unitary projects that remove any fragmentary temptation that only leads to irrelevance.” Asked with some irony about the metaphor that the poster with the motto “One step forward” hung crookedly on the stage on Saturday, “tilted to the right”, Maíllo also responded with humor: “Holding up to the left.”
