United for Extremadura has achieved a historic victory for the alternative left in Estremadura. With seven deputies, it practically doubles the seats of the last elections and exceeds the six that Podemos achieved alone in 2015, at the height of the party’s rise. The candidacy led by Irene de Miguel, in which Podemos, Izquierda Unida and Alianza Verde participate, improves by more than 10,000 votes compared to 2023 despite the significant drop in participation and manages to break the downward trend that has punished the state left for years.
The candidacy led by De Miguel together with Nerea Fernández, from Izquierda Unida, rises from four to seven seats. There are more than 50,000 votes and more than 10%. On March 28, the same coalition was left with 36,000 ballots and only 6% of the support. With this result, Izquierda Unida also benefits greatly from the coalition pact, with four seats, one more than Podemos, and doubles its current tally.
The result is historic in number of seats. Not even Podemos at its best, ten years ago, was able to reach seven deputies. It is true that the number of votes at that time was similar, slightly lower, and that in those elections Izquierda Unida participated in a separate candidacy, along with other confluences, with more than 27,000 votes that were left without a seat. In deputies, this result is the best of the entire left to the left of the PSOE since the recovery of democracy.
United for Extremadura has managed to achieve its objectives, advance in seats and attract part of those disenchanted by the Socialist Party, which registers its worst historical result, with 18 seats. He has done so after a campaign focused on the territory and with a genuine project of unity, which brings together all the forces of the alternative left present in the territory.
The attempt to capture the votes of a collapsed socialism has been evident throughout the campaign. In closing, Irene de Miguel appealed directly to those disappointed to talk to them about a “coherent, real, solid and hard-working alternative.” “Not even a left-wing vote can stay at home,” he reinforced to prevent that niche of voters from staying at home.
“There are undecided people who understand our proposal and share it, but who are disillusioned and hopeless with the left in general. We are demonstrating solvency and coherence. As for the PSOE, a leadership as weak as the one they have makes people look for an alternative. The Socialist Party has not chosen well,” he reasoned in an interview with this diary.
The coalition is a political project consolidated over the years. Already in 2023 it was one of the only communities where the left resisted in results compared to the previous elections. A model of unity of progressive forces that both De Miguel, from Podemos, and Nerea Fernández, from Izquierda Unida, have claimed in recent days.
“That space is not that it has been built again, it is that it has never stopped being built and that is the key. We do not come together just for elections, out of an electoral interest in joining forces to achieve more. We have created a real political space of confluence, proposing joint work throughout the time. Therein lies to a certain extent the recipe for success of Unidas por Extremadura. We are not a coalition, we are a confluence and that means having a structure, building a space with generosity, but also with loyalty and respect,” he also said in an interview with elDiario.es.
A formula that has managed to reverse a marked trend for the forces of the state left, which for years has been losing votes every time the polls are opened. Last year, for example, the results for the progressive space were disastrous in Galicia, where they were again left without representation, in Euskadi, where the division of the left caused a drop from the six seats that Elkarrekin Podemos obtained to the only deputy that Sumar won. In Catalonia the commons fell to their worst historical result.
The good performance of Unidas por Extremadura was expected by all progressive forces and that is why the state leaderships have tried to approach the candidate in recent weeks. Even Movimiento Sumar, Yolanda Díaz’s party, which has no presence in the coalition or the autonomous community, tried in recent weeks to claim its presence by claiming number 22 on the list for Cáceres for its ranks and asking for the vote for the alliance.
“Listen, territory and hope. Let’s take note of the experience of Unidas por Extremadura to take it further,” the party reacted in Bluesky after learning the election results.
But De Miguel has rejected that movement on several occasions. In several interviews he has made it clear that this force does not exist in his region and he even went so far as to call the second vice president a “fraud.” Since its inception, Sumar has tried to take advantage of the Podemos profiles that are more fractious with the state leadership to generate cracks in some decisions, as occurred at the launch of Díaz’s state candidacy, in Magariños. However, the Extremaduran leader, despite her criticism of some strategies of her party leaders, never broke and in fact is part of the state executive.
In these elections, in fact, Sumar’s ministers have attended the campaign of the Extremaduran left, something practically unprecedented since the beginning of the first coalition government in 2020. Not even Sira Rego, the minister of Izquierda Unida, whose party, IU, is part of the coalition, has attended.
We can: “This drift only stops on the left”
Those who have campaigned have been the leaders of Podemos, Ione Belarra and Irene Montero, and also the leader of Izquierda Unida, Antonio Maíllo, although there have not been events by all of those names together.
Belarra, for example, between the previous events and the campaign, has passed through the territory up to four times, while Montero was in two events. The Secretary of Organization and spokesperson for the party, Pablo Fernández, also participated in an event at the beginning of December. Maíllo, for his part, has gone up to two times during the 15 days of the electoral campaign.
“The PP and VOX are growing in Extremadura in the face of a powerless PSOE that is incapable of stopping this right. Podemos will be where it needs to be, defending rights in the institutions and in the streets, but this drift is only stopped by the left,” Belarra wrote on her social networks after the results. A message similar to that of Irene Montero, the number two of the party: “The PP wins in Extremadura with VOX fired. The machismo, corruption and social inaction of the Government is a factory of far-rightists. Podemos is there to confront the right and protect rights. The PSOE is not going to do anything. The path is feminist and on the left.”
Maíllo: “United work, roots and commitment without personalism”
Maíllo has also reacted, criticizing the PP’s move. “María Guardiola has failed when she called elections out of personal interest, not thinking about Extremadura. She has only fueled the advance of the extreme right and has normalized the PP’s pacts with Vox, with serious consequences for democracy and the future of the region,” she said on her X account.
Regarding the reading of the left’s candidacy, he defends the formula of unity and the absence of “personalisms.” “United for Extremadura has had a spectacular result: it grows in votes, percentage and representation. It is not improvisation: it is unitary work, roots and commitment without personalism. Izquierda Unida gives certainty to working families,” he said.
