Almost exactly a year ago, Yolanda Díaz gave a newspaper interview that appeared under the pleasingly provocative headline: “No basta con gestionar, a este Gobierno le falta alma” – “Running things isn’t enough; this government lacks spirit.”
While alma could also be translated as soul, heart or enthusiasm, the thrust of her comments to El País was perfectly clear. Despite being a key figure in Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist-led minority administration – she serves as labour minister and second deputy prime minister – Díaz believes governing is about more than just delivery. For her, politicians are there to improve people’s lives, to defend and increase hard-won rights, and to leave their country in a better state than they found it. Still, as she told the paper, the odd “happy policy” never does any harm either.
Twelve months on, as Spain faces a snap general election that could result in a coalition between the conservative People’s party (PP) and far-right Vox party, Díaz is putting her policies and her alma to the test.
The new Sumar movement she leads – a platform of leftwing, far-left and green parties including the beleaguered Podemos, once the great new hope of the Spanish left – is hoping that it and the Socialists will pick up enough votes between them to keep the PP and Vox out of power.
Like Sánchez, who has sought to portray the election as a Manichean choice between all that is progressive and all that is reactionary, Díaz is blunt about what’s at stake. “On 23 July, Spain will decide between two kinds of government – two coalitions,” she said on Wednesday. “The coalition of rights, freedom and progress – a coalition of us and the Socialist party – and the coalition of hatred, which rejects the rights of women and LGBT people, and which pits businesses against workers.”
However, recent polls suggest that the “coalition of rights, freedom and progress” has a staggering amount of work to do over the next two weeks. The PP, led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, remains firm favourite, even if it looks unlikely to secure an absolute majority and so will need to enlist the support of Santiago Abascal’s Vox – as it has in several cities and regions after May’s regional and local elections.
With 350 seats in Spain’s congress, the rival coalitions will be aiming to get as close to the 176-seat threshold that constitutes a majority.
A survey released by YouGov on Friday gave the PP 131 seats, the socialists 108, Vox 45 and Sumar 36, suggesting a possible absolute majority for a PP-Vox coalition.
If the Sánchez camp is quietly confident that the PP’s lead is narrowing because its deals with Vox are putting off moderate voters, Díaz feels her own track record in government and her platform’s range of eyecatching policies will tempt disillusioned voters further to the left.
The Sumar leader, a labour lawyer turned politician who was born in the north-western region of Galicia 52 years ago – and an atheist who describes her meeting with Pope Francis two years ago as “one of the most important conversations of my life” – enjoys the highest approval ratings of any Spanish political leader.
Despite being a member of the Spanish Communist party and an avowed feminist, environmentalist and progressive, Díaz claims not to be a fan of pigeonholing – especially as she tries to appeal to the widest possible range of left-of-centre voters.
“When it comes to -isms, I hate putting labels on things,” she said last week. “You’ll never find me in all that. What I am is a progressive woman who is the daughter of an anti-Franco activist who was a member of the Spanish Communist party.”
Her task is not easy. Although Spain’s economy is in decent shape – the inflation rate fell to 1.9% in June – the cost of living crisis continues to bite and political disenchantment, especially on the left, is rife.
Díaz acknowledges that what she terms “social malaise” or “citizen disaffection” is a big problem – worse than a few years ago, when anger and frustration over austerity and against elites gave rise to the indignados movement that created Podemos.
She says that while people are struggling to make ends meet, and health workers and teachers are still exhausted in the wake of the Covid pandemic, the right and far-right are intent on making noise, waging culture wars and raising tensions rather than explaining what solutions their coalition government would offer.
But Díaz insists Sumar, which she describes as “a citizens’ movement stitched together from the bottom up”, offers practical answers. It has pledged to put the climate emergency at the centre of policymaking, to introduce a shorter working week and, perhaps most arrestingly, to create a “universal inheritance” intended to improve social mobility by giving all young Spaniards €20,000 (£17,000) to spend on studying, training or starting a business when they reach the age of 18.
Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University, says policies such as the universal inheritance are intended to snag the attention of leftwing voters and drag the focus away from the monolithic showdown between the Socialists and the PP. He says Sumar faces a number of challenges as it tries to court voters – especially among Podemos supporters, who are still reeling from the party’s disastrous showing in the local and regional elections, and angry about what they see as Sumar’s strongarm tactics when it came to bringing Podemos into the alliance.
Podemos finally agreed to join Sumar last month, but the deal was fraught, not least because Díaz’s group refused to countenance the candidacy of Podemos’s Irene Montero. Montero, who serves as equality minister, was the main proponent and defender of a botched and unpopular sexual consent law under which more than 100 sex offenders were inadvertently released from jail.
“One of the challenges is how you inspire and mobilise these voters who are very disappointed for different reasons,” says Simón. “Some are disappointed by Podemos’s performance in government; some are disappointed because they haven’t seen any real change or improvement in their lives, and some are disappointed because of the way the coalition was put together or because Irene Montero isn’t on the ticket.
“There are complicated challenges, but a lot depends on whether Sumar can get across the message that ‘we’re the ones who can push the Socialists into making leftwing policies’.”
Simón points out that while some senior Podemos figures have defected gladly to Sumar, some of those who opposed the collaboration are engaged in a more “nihilistic” game.
“There are also some sectors within Podemos that know they’re not going to play any part in any future [Socialist]-Sumar coalition government,” he says. “Because of that, they want things to go badly for Sumar, because if that happens, they’ll not only thwart their rivals, they’ll also have been proved right when they said Podemos should have been the central player. That would also give them the chance to return to opposition in a stronger position.”
Patrick English, an associate director at YouGov, says the race is too close to call, adding that despite the PP’s lead, leftwing and smaller nationalist parties could still win enough seats to keep the right out of government.
“Given the ultra-competitiveness of seat allocation within the Spanish electoral system and the fact that we are still two weeks out from voting itself, it remains everything to play for,” he says.
Díaz, and Spain, will soon find out whether Sumar is up to the challenges it faces.
“Parties are odd tools that should serve to improve people’s lives,” she said in Madrid last week. “You’ll always find me working for my country and to improve people’s lives.”
She also revisited that newspaper interview. “That was a pretty controversial headline,” she said. “But I think I had a feeling for what was going on in our country.”
