IU, Sumar and Podemos reach an agreement to participate together in the elections in Andalusia | Andalusia Elections

In the end there was an agreement, in the middle of Good Friday and a few hours before the deadline closed. IU, Sumar and Podemos have reached an agreement to compete together in the Andalusian elections on May 17 in the Por Andalucía coalition, whose candidate will be the federal coordinator of IU, Antonio Maíllo. The candidacy has been made up of seven political forces: United Left, Sumar Movement, Andalusian People’s Initiative, Republican Alternative, Green Party, Podemos and Green Alliance. The pact has been reached against the clock, since the deadline for coalition registration ends this Friday at 11:59 p.m.

According to sources from Por Andalucía consulted by EL PAÍS, Podemos will top the list in Jaén and number two in Seville, places that are not a safe choice. In the 2022 elections, Por Andalucía did not obtain representation in Jaén nor did it win the number two in Seville. In the negotiations, the purple party asked to lead one of the five ‘safe’ candidates and it was IU that “ceded” that of Jaén, the sources point out.

The party led by Ione Belarra has made clear its dissatisfaction with the distribution in a press release issued this Friday: “We can decide to accept the coalition agreement, despite believing that it does not reflect the political weight of our party, understanding that today it is more important to defend health and housing before any partisan calculation.” And he has defended that “thanks to the generosity of Podemos, the presence of three lists to the left of the PSOE has been avoided.” He expressly thanks Juan Antonio Delgado for “his enormous generosity.” “We made this decision out of political responsibility and with the conviction of continuing to build a strong and brave left-wing alternative to stand up to the right and defend the rights of Andalusians,” he added.

Leaders who have participated in the negotiation highlight that from the beginning all the parties started with a “will to agree” and to avoid three ballots to the left of the PSOE. The premise of not dismantling what has already been agreed has also weighed because, according to these sources, “it would be like rewarding a way of doing things.”

The sources consulted do not clarify whether Delgado, who was elected in primaries as Podemos candidate for the presidency of the Board, will head the Jaén list. In Seville it is not possible to occupy second place, because the candidacies are zipper (alternation of men and women), as required by Andalusian electoral law.

Delgado has emphasized in a message on the social network “The bodies of Podemos Andalucía have endorsed the agreement with Por Andalucía. The Andalusian people wanted unity on the left and today it is a reality. For my part, absolute generosity,” he added.

This Friday, Maíllo also spoke on the social network X to celebrate the agreement. “Today we take another step in the unitary construction of @PorAndaluciaOrg by incorporating @Vamos_AND,” he stated. In the same message, he stressed that with this pact they consolidate what he described as “the only real alternative to Moreno Bonilla with more unity.” “We are going for everything, with joy, determination and at the height of the historical moment. Let it be for free Andalusia,” he added.

According to the agreement reached, IU will head the lists of Seville, Málaga, Córdoba, Granada and Almería; Sumar Movement, that of Cádiz; Initiative of the Andalusian People, that of Huelva; and Podemos, the one from Jaén. Right now, Por Andalucía has five seats (the minimum to form its own parliamentary group) for the constituencies of Seville, Cádiz, Málaga, Córdoba and Granada. Contrary to what happened in 2022, Podemos has been very weakened in the negotiations after not getting even 1% of the votes in the elections in Aragón (0.94%) and Castilla y León (0.74%) in which it participated alone.

Negotiation against the clock

The pact has taken place after Podemos has turned a deaf ear to all the calls from the Por Andalucía party table, since in October 2024 IU moved to launch the process to reissue the electoral alliance. In April 2025, according to the former co-spokesperson of the Podemos executive and regional deputy, José Manuel Gómez Jurado, a preliminary agreement was reached to go in coalition, but the state leadership stopped it. The general secretary of Podemos Andalucía, Raquel Martínez – who is on medical leave and has been sidelined in this process – and the majority of the executive were in favor of going together.

Last Sunday, Delgado offered a helping hand to Maíllo, a position that 24 hours later was endorsed by Podemos spokesperson Pablo Fernández. From there events precipitated. The formation led by Ione Belarra called an internal consultation on Tuesday to endorse the decision of the Andalusian leadership to “integrate” into Por Andalucía. The results released on Wednesday showed support of 81.4%. On Thursday they sat down to negotiate for 11 hours and this Friday the coalition was registered in the registry of coalitions based in the Andalusian Parliament around 1:00 p.m. The deadline ended at 11:59 p.m. The members of Por Andalucía met from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Thursday at the IU headquarters on Donantes de Sangre Street in Seville with two breaks, one for lunch and the other “to think,” according to negotiation sources. What was most worrying was that there would be leaks, so a pact of silence was agreed and cell phones should be left outside the meeting room. In 2022 they did it at 11:57 p.m. and without Podemos, because they tightened the rope to the maximum.

That year, Podemos rushed the negotiation so much, presided over by mutual distrust with IU, that it was formally and legally left out of the candidacy, although its deputies participated as independents. The document they agreed upon included data on the name, acronyms, symbols, constituencies and the management and coordination bodies, among others. But in parallel, Podemos and IU signed another document in which a pure distribution of power was established for supposed institutional positions in the future (on the Parliament Board and bodies of parliamentary extraction), turns in interventions and debates, and distribution of parliamentary assignments. Podemos benefited in all areas. From IU it was called “the document of surrender.”