Controversial left-wing minister to head Podemos’ EU elections list

Former Equality Minister Irene Montero, who recently caused controversy for her promotion of a ‘yes means yes’ law, will lead the party’s list for the European elections to have an ‘independent voice’ separated from the Socialist Group and The Greens/EFA, according to sources in the anti-establishment party.

The announcement of the candidacy was made by Podemos on Saturday at a party event in Madrid, organised under the slogan “Now more than ever”, which brought together around 600 supporters of the anti-capitalist party, which currently has five members in the Spanish Parliament, Euractiv’s partner EFE reported.

The dispute between Belarra and Díaz, her former Podemos colleague, dates back to months ago when Díaz opted not to include Montero in the current coalition government between the PSOE and Sumar after the bitter controversy generated by the so-called “only yes means yes” law, which Montero promoted.

The controversial “only yes means yes” law had to be urgently amended by the PSOE, with the support of the centre-right Partido Popular (PP/EPP), the main opposition force in the Chamber, as it had the opposite effect to the one expected.

Sumar, which has 31 MPs in the Spanish parliament and is the fourth largest force in the chamber after the far-right Vox party, with 33 MPs, decided not to include the combative Montero in the new government nor any Podemos minister to avoid friction with Sánchez, who has made no secret of his bad relationship with Montero and Belarra.

On 5 December, the party led by Ione Belarra, former minister of Social Rights in the second government of Pedro Sánchez (PSOE/S&D), decided to break relations and leave Sumar due to strong disputes with the leader of the left-wing platform and current vice-president of the government, Yolanda Díaz.

Podemos is currently integrated with other heterogeneous formations in the Spanish parliament’s so-called Mixed Group (Grupo Mixto).

A personal vendetta?

In a political move that some Spanish media are calling a “vendetta” for the “apartheid” to which Podemos has been subjected, as the party’s founder and former minister Pablo Iglesias recently pointed out, Belarra decided to put Montero, a radical feminist, at the top of the list for the European Parliament elections in June.

On Saturday, Belarra, a friend of Montero’s, asked the former Equality minister to lead Podemos’ European list and help the left-wing party “raise the banner of social justice”, environmentalism and feminism to the top.

“There is no one better than you to take Spain forward into the future,” Belarra told her party comrade and friend.

Podemos, with ‘own voice’ in Brussels and Strasbourg

Regarding the EU elections, the leader of Podemos warned that Europe finds itself in “a dangerous policy” that tends towards the right and is subordinated to US interests.

“We are not from the Socialist Party (PSOE/S&D) or the Greens (EFA-The Greens)”, Belarra pointed out, while making it clear that her party aspires to have “its own voice” in the European Parliament.

Montero expressed satisfaction with her election and stressed that “the motives and hopes that mobilised us to walk this path are still intact”. The former minister was referring to the origins of Podemos, a party that was officially born in January 2014 as a result of the discontent of a part of the most radical left in Spain, placing itself further to the left of the PSOE, a liberal centre-left party.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)

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