Frente Amplio and Podemos fail in negotiations for 29N and leave the alternative left divided in almost all of Spain: there is only unity in Canarias and Valencia

Frente Amplio and Podemos closed negotiations last night without achieving a joint candidacy for the general elections on November 29. The deadline to register coalitions expired at 11:59 p.m. on Friday after a day of crossed blockades and last-minute offers that did not allow extending the agreements of Canarias and the Comunitat Valenciana. Conversations also did not prosper in territories where Podemos claimed to have closed or very advanced pacts with Izquierda Unida.

The result leaves two candidacies in Madrid, headed by Irene Montero and Emilio Delgado, while in Catalunya Podemos's collaboration with Esquerra Republicana will compete with the Comuns' space that Ada Colau will lead. The discrepancy over these two communities ended up conditioning alliances in much of the country, despite months of debate on how to unite the space to the left of the PSOE.

The outcome confirmed the scenario that sources from Frente Amplio consulted by 'ElConstitucional.es' considered almost certain on Friday for Madrid. From Podemos, this newspaper's inquiries were met with the silence of an organization focused on negotiations. The final hours passed without the leaderships managing to resolve their differences or save the pending territorial pacts.

Two crossed writings without agreement

After half past nine at night, the Frente Amplio presented a six-point proposal. It offered Podemos priority starting positions in Madrid and Catalunya, full participation rights in the candidacies, one of the spokespersons of the future parliamentary group, and an equitable distribution of resources. The document included programmatic bases on housing, public services, salaries, equality, and energy transition, as well as alliances with territorial forces.

The response arrived around eleven. Podemos proposed concentrating on Extremadura, Euskadi, Cantabria, Galicia, and Murcia, where it maintained that there were "made or very advanced" agreements blocked by the Frente Amplio leadership. It also considered it possible to agree in Andalusia, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Asturias, Navarra, and La Rioja. Its approach kept Madrid and Catalunya out of the agreement.

The leadership of Ione Belarra defended collaboration with ERC and rejected what it interpreted as an implicit demand to break it. The Broad Front's offer did not expressly include this break, although it proposed a joint candidacy also in Catalonia. In Madrid, Podemos maintained its bet on Montero, supported by 24,136 people in primaries without another presidential candidate, and her argument that competing separately would not be electorally penalized.

None of the documents resolved the difference between a state alliance and territorial pacts. The federal coordinator of IU, Antonio Maíllo, had ruled out negotiating outside the Broad Front and rejected "chopped" agreements. The coalition ended up registering without Podemos, claimed to bring together 15 organizations, and attributed the failure to the purples' refusal to accept its proposal. In its final assessment, it apologized for the "unnecessary noise" and called for "moving on".

Galicia and Balearic Islands denounce the blockade by Izquierda Unida

The most concrete accusations came from Podemos' territorial organizations during the night. At 00:07, the Galician coordinator, Isabel Faraldo, declared the agreement lost and pointed directly to Esquerda Unida. "Blocked by EU, with direct instructions from IU Federal", she wrote in Galician. Her organization maintained that it had not demanded positions as a condition for an agreement, while Sumar Galicia defended that it had maintained a generous offer until the end. Frente Amplio was constituted in the Galician constituencies without Podemos.

In the Balearic Islands, Podemos coordinator, Lucía Muñoz, published at 11:33 PM an account of the last contacts. According to her explanation, they had been asking to sign the coalition for hours and Més requested their legal representative's data at 11:00 PM. Fifteen minutes later, she stated, they were informed that they were out because IU refused to pact with them. "We tried until the end," she concluded. Sources from Ara Més, for their part, linked the failure to the national confrontation between Podemos and the Broad Front.

The lack of understanding extended to Andalusia, where Podemos claimed to have offered IU to lead five of the eight provincial lists. IU, Movimiento Sumar, Iniciativa del Pueblo Andaluz and Verdes Equo formed Frente Amplio Por Andalucía without the purples, leaving the community heading towards three alternative left candidacies alongside Adelante Andalucía. In Aragon, Podemos also did not join the Frente Amplio alliance with Chunta Aragonesista.

Canary Islands and the Valencian Community remained as the two exceptions of unity between both spaces. In the islands, they will run under Unidad del Pueblo Canario, together with Nueva Canarias; in Valencian territory, Compromís-Front Valencià groups Compromís, Podem, Esquerra Unida and ERPV. This last pact was saved on Friday after EUPV changed its initial rejection to a 66% endorsement of a modified offer. The territorial formulas that prospered there could not be extended to the rest of the negotiations.

The risk of losing seats to the far-right

The electoral consequences go beyond the struggle to lead the lists. Votes for Congress are converted into seats province by province, without a state pool that allows compensating for support that remains unrepresented. The legal barrier is 3% of valid votes in each constituency, but in provinces that elect few deputies, the percentage needed to obtain one can be considerably higher. Two candidacies can exceed that minimum and both remain out, or lose a seat that together they would have contested.

Pablo Iglesias defended on Friday that the competition in Madrid would not have "the slightest electoral penalty" and accused those who conditioned territorial pacts on an agreement in the capital of preventing them. The greater number of deputies that Madrid distributes facilitates obtaining representation, but it does not guarantee that dividing support will be without cost. The final distribution depends on the votes of each list and its competitors; it also cannot be taken for granted that a coalition would automatically retain all the support of its separate members.

In 2023, these forces converged under the Sumar umbrella and obtained more than three million votes and 31 deputies. Now they must compete for part of that electorate while defending the need to stop the far right. The contrast with the Senate was reflected in the agreement that PSOE and Frente Amplio closed last night to present shared candidacies under the name Senado de Progreso, with the intention of disputing control of the Upper House with the PP. That pact does not resolve the division for Congress.

This Saturday, the two spaces will face the day after the failure separately. Podemos will gather its State Citizen Council at 11:30 a.m. at its headquarters in Madrid, to evaluate the situation after the deadline. Half an hour later, at 12, Frente Amplio will present its candidacy in the Auditorium of the Parque Lineal del Manzanares, with Ada Colau, Emilio Delgado and representatives of the organizations that registered the coalition.