► Carolina Bescansa joins Errejón’s ‘Más País’, will lead candidates in La Coruña
► Ex-Podemos women legislators to lead ‘Más País’ lists in Andalucía provinces
In upcoming 10th November national elections, former Podemos co-founder Carolina Bescansa will lead the list of candidates from Galicia’s A Coruña province for Spain’s newest national left-of-centre party, Más País, joining a slew of former Podemos activists and regional leaders who are abandoning the Unidas Podemos coalition for the new party led by Íñigo Errejón.
Bescansa and Errejón were among five co-founders of Podemos, when the left-wing anti-austerity party burst onto Spain’s political scene in 2014. But, a series of disagreements since 2016 over Podemos election strategies and the centralized party control under the leadership of co-founder Pablo Iglesias prompted both Errejón and Bescansa to abandon Podemos earlier this year.
As the new party finalizes its lists of candidates for the 16-18 provinces in which it will run in the upcoming 10th November elections, the number of women candidates stepping forward for the new party is noteworthy.
Since 2016, internal opposition to the Iglesias leadership team has centered on the party’s sharp turn to the left and alleged lack of gender diversity in leadership positions. In seeking to attract dissenters from the Podemos rank-and-file to the new project, Más País has accordingly been advertising itself as Más Verde, Más Feminista, Más Justo (“Greener, More Feminist, More Just”).
At the weekend, Más País announced the addition of Bescansa to its provincial lists of candidates for a seat in Congress, as well as the surprise addition in Andalucía of the sole Senator for the Podemos-backed Adelante Andalucía coalition in the regional parliament, Esperanza Gómez, who will lead the Más País list of candidates in Sevilla.
The list of candidates for Más País in three other principal provincial capitals of Andalucía will likewise be led by women, it was announced over the weekend. In Granada, the party’s candidates will be led by Ana Terrón, a former Podemos deputy in Spain’s national Congress, while in Málaga the Más País list of candidates will be led by Carmen Lizárraga, a former Podemos representative in the Andalucian parliament. In the Podemos stronghold of Cadiz, union activist María del Mar Polanco will lead the Más País list.
► Read Original News Sources in Spanish: El Mundo, El País and El Diario …
► Click to read more about Carolina Bescansa & Podemos leadership crises …
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