The left will go to the polls broken: Podemos challenges the Frente Amplio and will present candidates in 47 provinces

Podemos challenges the Broad Front. The purple party announced this Monday that it will present candidates throughout Spain for both the Congress and the Senate and thus confirms that the alternative left will attend the general elections divided and rotated in 47 of the 52 constituencies. The exceptions are the Valencian Community and the Canary Islands, where there are agreements for a single list in its five provinces.

Likewise, Podemos closes the door to members of the party joining as independents in candidates such as Aragón and other regions, as they had been invited, to avoid a confrontation with two ballots.

Last Friday, the deadline to register coalitions with the Electoral Board, Podemos and the Frente Amplio failed in their attempts to put together a unity candidacy for the November 29 elections. That night it was clear that Sumar's heir alliance, which brings together 15 parties, was going to present electoral lists throughout the country, however, the question remained as to what Podemos was going to do, in case it was going to opt for a tactical withdrawal from certain constituencies.

That is not going to happen in any case, it has been made official today. The alternative left to the PSOE will present a minimum of two ballots in 15 autonomous communities in which there is no pact. The duel between the purples and the Frente Amplio is going to be especially intense in two autonomies. In Catalonia, where Podemos has an agreement with ERC with Gabriel Rufián as a reference and the Frente Amplio presents its candidate for the presidency of the Government, Ada Colau. And in the Community of Madrid, where the purple ones go alone with Irene Montero and the Frente Amplio presents Emilio Delgado as number one.

The spokesperson and secretary of the Podemos Organization, Pablo Fernández, has stressed that this is already a "closed issue", that they are turning the page on the Frente Amplio and that they are looking towards the elections with their motto "peace, home and work" with Irene Montero as a reference. For this reason, he has already delved into what the difference is between one candidacy and another. "We are very clear that in the streets and squares they are not asking for an agreement with the PSOE," he said, but rather for a left "autonomous from the PSOE."

In the first press conference after the failed negotiations, Fernández assured that they tried "until the last minute" to reach "territorial agreements" with IU, but he regretted that the Frente Amplio had chosen its path and decided, in his opinion, to "close in band" to agree with them "and agree with the PSOE in the Senate."

The leader explained that they were until 11:50 p.m. on Friday trying "especially" for Podemos to enter the alliances of Aragon and the Balearic Islands, where there were unity pacts in which only the purple ones were missing, however, he denounced that they were "blocked" and their integration was "prevented", closing all possibilities. As for the rest of the territories, Podemos has been explaining that IU did not want to make separate agreements for each autonomous community and that it demanded that an agreement be made for all of Spain. The purple ones did not want it because they separated Madrid and Catalonia from the pacts.