Podemos rejects Frente Amplio's offer for 29-N and proposes another pact

Podemos rejects the offer from Frente Amplio and proposes a coalition without Madrid or Catalonia. The deadline to register coalitions expires this Friday at midnight.

According to OK Diario, Podemos claims that there are agreements made or very advanced in Extremadura, the Basque Country, Cantabria, Galicia, and Murcia, which they believe are blocked by the leadership of Frente Amplio. The party blames this delay on negotiations with IU, Movimiento Sumar, Más Madrid, and the commons.

The offer that the purple party has returned reserved priority positions in Madrid and Catalonia and a co-spokesperson role for the future parliamentary group. Podemos responds with a counterproposal that excludes both communities and, in return, allows for agreements to be closed in the rest of the territories.

“It is essential to go together in those territories so that not a single left-wing vote is lost.”

The purple party considers an agreement possible in Andalusia, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Asturias, Navarra, and La Rioja. In Andalusia, according to Podemos sources, the party offered IU Málaga, Córdoba, and Cádiz, keeping Sevilla and Granada for themselves, the five constituencies where they had representation in 2023.

Discussions between regional leaders in Murcia, Extremadura, Cantabria, and Castilla y León were frozen from 20:00 hours, according to those same sources. IU, for its part, would have opted to promote an agreement with other forces.

The crux of the disagreement is the territorial scope of the alliance. Podemos does not want to break its pact with ERC in Catalonia, which includes collaboration in the campaign of Irene Montero and Gabriel Rufián. In Madrid, the party believes that running separately does not penalise the vote.

“We do not accept the demand to break that alliance which is implicit in the proposal you have sent us.”

Their counteroffer requests that Madrid and Catalonia be treated as exceptions that do not block the agreement in the rest of the country. Frente Amplio, in its initial proposal, had offered priority positions in both communities, an equitable distribution of resources, and a programme focused on housing, public services, and wage increases.

So far, agreements between both spaces have only been closed in Canary Islands and in the Valencian Community. In the islands, they include Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista, and in the Valencian Community, the candidacy is led by Compromís, with Izquierda Unida, Podemos, and the Valencian federation of ERC.

The deadline to register coalitions expires this Friday at midnight, so any agreement for the general elections on November 29 must be closed before that hour.