“I bring a simple message: No more drama.” The phrase, pronounced almost like a war cry by the head of the Frente Amplio list in Madrid, Emilio Delgado, unleashed unanimous applause from a packed auditorium in the Parque Lineal del Manzanares, in the south of Madrid. The coalition made up of IU, Comuns, Más Madrid and Movimiento Sumar, and adds agreements in Aragon, the Balearic Islands, the Valencian Community, Asturias, Andalusia and the Canary Islands with other formations, has made an effort this Saturday to turn the page on the frustrated negotiations with Podemos for a single ballot on the left for the 29-N elections. “The time to unite the parties is over, it is time to unite the people,” Delgado pointed out in a speech that brought nearly a thousand supporters to their feet.
In a much more festive atmosphere than last week, the presidential candidate, Ada Colau, has apologized for the noise these days, but has justified the importance of the Frente Amplio with a speech very focused on housing, the axis on which the entire campaign will revolve.
"There are many people who hoped that we would be even more; that instead of 15 organizations, we would be 16. Today I know that there will be disappointed people and I am sorry, but I can also tell you, because it was there, that the Frente Amplio gave everything, offered everything. But if someone does not want to sit at a table, they cannot be forced," he explained in reference to Podemos. This afternoon's rally puts an end to a traumatic process with negotiations broadcast live and which was resolved at the stroke of midnight on Friday, when the deadline to register the coalitions expired. Finally, Podemos is not with them in most territories. The party will have Irene Montero as the head of the list for Madrid, who will be supported by the ERC candidate, Gabriel Rufián.
"Many groups are going to push for us to remain in the trap of what has been the last week, of what could have been and was not (...), but while we have those conversations that bore the goats, there is a woman who has been on a waiting list for months, people who cannot even pay the rent at the end of the month. These people do not need soap operas, dramas, they need two very simple things: that we honor those efforts by transforming them into political power for the people and a team in which participate”, Delgado has insisted on his idea.
Allusions to what happened have also been present in the interventions of deputies Tesh Sidi and Toni Valero. “We know that we are not all here, but we are 15 political organizations that want to stop fascism, that have said yes to a ballot so that not a single progressive vote goes to waste,” the Más Madrid parliamentarian acknowledged. "Here are the organized people. Here is the Frente Amplio, this is the Frente Amplio," claimed Valero, from IU, who is the party's reference in these elections.
In her speech, Colau vindicated her commitment to the Frente Amplio: "I am an imperfect woman, but with firm principles. At this historical moment I am not going to fail you." With the entire public standing to receive her amid shouts of “President, President!”, the former mayor of Barcelona spoke from the housing lectern. Referring to the PP and Vox, he denounced: “They don't want to see young people sharing a flat between four or five, they don't want to see those evicted families with babies in their arms,” before ensuring that “there is no age in this country in which housing is not a huge problem.” Colau has recalled her years as an activist with the Platform for People Affected by Mortgage (PAH) and has vindicated the housing policies promoted during her time as mayor, including the creation of a mediation unit to stop evictions, the measures to expropriate apartments from large holders and the million-dollar fines imposed on “vulture funds.”
Against the PSOE
The candidate has also attacked the PSOE, which she has accused of stopping some of the social advances promoted during the legislature. "The Socialist Party must understand that it is not enough to use fear to combat the extreme right. We must combat a social unrest that is real," he warned. Colau has defended that, to protect social rights and democracy, it is necessary to be “much braver than the Socialist Party has been until now.”
Confronting the opposition, the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, confirmed this morning as number two for Barcelona after Colau, has also responded to the mockery of the PP leader.
-Feijóo has called us a coalition of desperate people, do you know who is desperate?
-Him!- the audience responded in unison.
-The one who has been running behind Vox for years and is on his way to the opposition for four more- Urtasun has predicted.
"We are not going to allow four oligarchs to come so that we end a model like that of the United States. This is not our Spain and we are not going to allow it. Nor do they question the sick leave," the minister stressed.
"No one gives up here. We have 43 days to mobilize the working class and defeat the reaction. They want us demoralized and with our arms down. Not even half a concession, here we are," the Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, harangued in a very rallying tone. “With our heads held high, our principles intact, here we have never been confused about loyalties or adversaries,” he added.
The leader of Movimiento Sumar, Verónica Barbero, has focused on the role of space in the Government and the achievements of this legislature, accusing the PSOE of being the “brake” of the Executive. “We have not come to administer resignation, we have come to change things, and that is the Frente Amplio, we want more,” he assured. "Feijóo and Abascal are already doing the math on how they are going to distribute the rights they want to achieve. With the Front standing, pensions are not touched, salaries are raised and rents are controlled. We are going to fight for the tenant who sleeps in fear that the landlord will kick him out; for the worker who is going to see how his salary is raised; for the mothers and fathers who do not have time to see their children, for the women who want to decide about our own bodies," he listed. Barbero, who has thrown a dart at the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska: "You don't play with the right to strike. Either you are with the people who defend their rights or with those who repress them. Clarify yourself, Mr. Marlaska," he stated.
“The worst news for Feijóo, Abascal and the Urba Gestión on duty [the company that evicted Maricarmen] is that the Frente Amplio gets a good result,” said Valero, for whom these elections represent “a historical and country crossroads.” “What we are at stake is whether we are going to have a protective State that provides human security or we are going to have the law of the jungle (…) The Broad Front has a country purpose.”
“In Aragon the extreme right already governs and violet points are eliminated, tension zones [of rent] are not declared and sexist and racist policies are carried out,” warned the president of Chunta Aragonesista, Jorge Pueyo, in his brief intervention.
