The Broad Front asks for "unity" against "fascism" and moves past the crisis with Podemos: "If someone does not want to sit at a table, they cannot be forced."

The Broad Front asks for "unity" against "fascism" and turns the page from the crisis with Podemos: "If someone does not want to sit at a table, they cannot be forced." The long night on Friday during which the Broad Front and Podemos confirmed their inability to form a unitary candidacy for the general elections of November 29th marked this Saturday the presentation rally of the alliance of 15 parties, including Movement Sumar, United Left, Más Madrid, and Comuns, to which thousands of people attended in a Madrid park. "I know there will be disappointed people and I am sorry, but all the people who worked until the last minute have given their all, they did not give up until the very last minute, they offered everything. But if someone does not want to sit at a table, they cannot be forced," assured Ada Colau, the Frente Amplio candidate for Prime Minister, amidst cries of "president, president." Without directly mentioning Podemos, Colau has stressed that there will no longer be talk of party names throughout the campaign and has guaranteed the unity of action of all the formations in the space. The former mayor of Barcelona has wanted to turn the page from the tumultuous negotiations with Podemos and has celebrated "a great pact of 15 formations." "But we expected us to be even more, that instead of 15 formations we would be at least 16," she emphasized. Just before this, the Frente Amplio list head for Madrid, Emilio Delgado, had called on Saturday to overcome the "slippery arenas" stirred by the confederal left in recent weeks due to the failed negotiation with Podemos. "No more dramas, the dramas are over, we are not here to settle accounts with anyone," Delgado said during the rally held in the Auditorium of Parque del Manzanares in the capital. "People do not need snake-like negotiations" "The time to unite the parties is over and the time to unite the people is beginning," he added to an attentive audience. "People do not need snake-like negotiations," he added, while also reivindicating the struggles for housing, pensions, or equality. "We must make a great leap forward in this country to break inequality in this country," Delgado concluded. In the same vein, the spokesperson for IU, Tony Valero, has reivindicated the creation of the Frente Amplio as "a project of hope" for the "people." "Hope is something that is built, that is kneaded in every social struggle," he highlighted. Valero stressed that the negotiators of the alliance have spent "two weeks buried" seeking an agreement, and he recalled: "Politics is also generosity, it is also doing good, and politics is full of simple and ordinary people who do good things." The first to speak was the leader of Más Madrid, Tesh Sidi, who launched another similar message: "We know we are not all, but we are 15 political organizations that want to stop fascism, so that not a single progressive vote goes to waste." Sidi wanted to set aside the disagreements with Podemos that prevented a joint candidacy until midnight, and she indicated that the pre-campaign begins "with the desire to start talking about people's lives." Housing and pensions as a banner In addition to allusions to 'the internal', the speeches of all spokespersons from the different parties that spoke at this Saturday's rally reivindicated housing and pensions as the main pillars of their strategy. "We have come to change things and we are the ones who want more," the spokesperson for Movement Sumar, Verónica Martínez Barbero, reivindicated during the presentation of the coalition. "No one gives up here," said the Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, about the left's expectations for the general elections of November 29th. "We have 43 days to mobilize the working class," he added, in addition to demanding to "slow down" the far-right. "They want us with our arms folded and they will get the opposite. No half confession, no half distraction, to defend the working people until victory," he said. "With the Frente Amplio standing, pensions are not touched, with us standing, rents are controlled, wages are raised, and those who have to pay pay," he said, in addition to reivindicating Sumar's policies in the Executive. "Being in the Government is useful when you are willing to stand up: either there are housing laws or there is no Council of Ministers," Martínez recalled, alluding to the stance of the ministers of Sumar before the PSOE. In his view, "housing policy has had a brake called PSOE and an accelerator that is the street." "We tell the PSOE that what has been achieved matters, but that it cannot ask the people to be content," he concluded. In the name of Comuns, the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, warned that the right "comes with the policies of the meat grinder," using the upcoming visit of the Argentine president, Javier Milei, to Madrid for this purpose. "We will not allow them to seize institutions to put them at the service of oligarchies," said Urtasun. Amid applause, the Minister of Culture assured that the right "has taken off its masks" already in the pre-campaign. "In this campaign we will need a Broad Front that says things very clearly. The right is saying things very clearly. They have already said the truth, they are going straight to seize our public pension system and that is something we will not allow. We will not allow the inheritance of pensions to come from four oligarchs so that we end up like the US, with people aged 70 working. This is not our Spain and we will not allow it," he emphasized. Agreements in the Valencian Community and Canary Islands Frente Amplio and Podemos confirmed last night their irreconcilable differences without being able to register a coalition to participate together in the general elections of November 29th. The exceptions are the Valencian Community and the Canary Islands, where the presence of strong regional parties like Compromís, in the Valencian case and Nueva Canarias, in the archipelago, has indeed allowed them to form alliances that include both Podemos and IU. In the remaining 47 constituencies—all except the three Valencian ones and the two Canaries—Podemos and the Broad Front (the latter with different formulations depending on the territory) will present separate lists for the elections. Their candidates will also be different: Irene Montero from the Mursals, occupying the number one position on the Madrid list, and Ada Colau from the alliance of IU, Comuns, Más Madrid, and Movement Sumar, leading the Barcelona list. 79