MadridWhen Pablo Iglesias appointed Yolanda Díaz as his successor at the head of the political space on the left of the PSOE, she was one of the most highly rated ministers in the Spanish government and became of the founder of Podemos, in the leader with the best score in the barometer of the Sociological Research Center (CIS). Just before the general elections on July 23, 2023, Díaz was the most highly rated political leader with a score of 4.84 and the third highest-rated minister (5.17). 12.2% of the people surveyed answered that she was their preferred choice to be president of the Spanish government behind only the candidates of the PSOE and the PP, Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
A year and a half later, the CIS notes a decline in Díaz’s popularity. In this October’s barometer, the second vice-president and Minister of Labor is no longer the most highly rated leader. It gets a lower score than that of Sánchez and Feijóo, of 3.99. As a member of the Spanish executive, Díaz has fallen to thirteenth position with a 4.22 and is far from the approval obtained by the Socialist Ministers of Defense and Economy, Margarita Robles and Carlos Cuerpo. To the question of “who would prefer to be the president of the government at the moment”, Díaz drops to fifth position and only 4.2% answer his name. She is surpassed not only by the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, with 6.6% of the answers, but by the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, with 5%.
What has happened to tarnish Díaz’s image? On the one hand, the second vice-president accuses the attrition of the internal disputes in the political space that she had to lead – with the break with Podemos as the most famous episode – and the bad results of her personalist project, Sumar, in the last electoral cycle. In fact, this already caused him to resign in June as leader of Sumar, a project still under construction that has had to redo its plans to give more prominence to the formations that were to integrate it -Més Madrid, Izquierda Unida or the commons – who denounced the lack of internal democracy due to Díaz’s hyper-leadership. With the future of Sumar still to be defined and the new role adopted by Díaz – the party appointed an interim leadership after stepping alongside its leader and on December 14 and 15 it will hold a second assembly to determine the new direction–, the second vice president has decreased her media exposure.
Sources from her team explain that Díaz is now completely overturned in her institutional role and that Sumar “goes down her own lane”, from which she has disassociated herself. Regarding the impact that this could have on the public perception of his leadership and the evaluations carried by the CIS, the same sources say that they are not worried and that these ratings “come and go”. However, they also admit that Díaz needs the approval of the general State budgets for next year to be able to introduce the policies he champions.
Social agenda and corruption
At the moment, the PSOE’s budget negotiation with Junts remains stuck even though talks are underway, according to government sources. Podemos has also raised the price precisely in areas that Sumar claims, such as the housing problem – the purple party demands that rental prices be reduced by law by 40%. Díaz, as a member of the coalition, has less leeway to demand drastic measures from the Socialists, although sources from the Sumar parliamentary group warn that “they will gradually raise the temperature” against the PSOE. In fact, this Tuesday, he allied himself with the PP so that Congress must authorize the shipment of weapons abroad, without counting on the socialists’ opinion. In return, the populists supported a reform of Sumar on mortgages.
Sumar is allied with the PP so that Congress must authorize the shipment of weapons abroad
Díaz also puts pressure on taxation, she explained herself. The fact is that Sumar needs to demonstrate its usefulness by forcing progress on the social agenda in a much less prolific legislature than the previous one, when Unides Podemos was the minority partner and Junts was not decisive.
In fact, Díaz expects to materialize before the end of the year one of Sumar’s major electoral commitments: the reduction of the working day. Negotiations with social agents have dragged on for months and there is still no agreement with the employer. In an interview with TVE this Tuesday, the second vice-president has warned the CEOE that she will not make any more proposals and that she will fight for the right even if they oppose it. In this way, Díaz will be able to claim a victory in an affair in which, they say from his team, he has been totally focused.
On the other hand, the second vice-president is displaced in the battle between PSOE and PP. In fact, Díaz has explained that “she does not feel comfortable” in this war of disputes between the two main state parties and has regretted that this generates public disaffection. “I don’t share this way of doing politics. They won’t find me there,” he said, claiming that “politics is about putting measures on the table.” Now, even if Díaz is postulating as an alternative to this “climate of permanent tension and insults”, the constant media confrontation keeps him away from the spotlight and makes it difficult for him to impose the propositional framework that would suit him.
