Sumar turns the defeat of the working day into a long-term bet

Sumar's first major defeat of the legislative session was a foregone conclusion. The reduction of the working week to 37.5 hours, a flagship of Yolanda Díaz's program, foundered last Wednesday in Congress after colliding with the rejection announced months earlier by Junts.

However, the second vice president and her team have been quick to present the setback as a tactical, not a strategic, setback. A mere stumble in the parliamentary arena, which, they insist, is offset by the underlying battle being waged in the streets. "We lost a vote, but we are going to win this measure because there is no going back," Sumar has been repeating these days, confident that public support will be decisive in unblocking the bill when it is brought back to Congress.

The program downplays Díaz's harshness toward Nogueras and highlights the fact that a debate took place on the country's model.

The strategy follows a clear logic. The first objective is to cushion the personal erosion that Díaz faces by seeing her flagship project founder in the Lower House at the first sign of trouble. But the maneuver seeks more than just saving the image of its main figurehead. Sumar's leadership insists that the episode has served to finally place at the center of political debate the social proposals that the confederal left was unable to deploy during the first half of the term, stymied by the resistance of the PSOE.

Sources within the confederation interpret the parliamentary clash with Junts in this light, which Díaz bluntly accused of "defending the interests of the most reactionary sectors of Spanish employers" and aligning itself with business leaders rather than "the working majority."

"Much emphasis has been placed on the tone" used by Díaz in her exchange with the post-Convergent party spokesperson, Miriam Nogueras, sources in the parliamentary group admit. The comment reflects the concern that plagued the PSOE for several hours, fearing that the harsh exchange could cloud the upcoming negotiations between the government and Carles Puigdemont's party, particularly regarding the budget.

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But none of that happened. And just yesterday, the Socialist Party celebrated it again, emphasizing, through the First Vice President and Minister of Finance, that communication with Junts remains intact.

"This is what the government wants to convey. As always, and regardless of the vicissitudes of the bills, we will continue working to make a right that we believe is time to be achieved for Spanish workers a reality," said María Jesús Montero from Cádiz.

But Sumar adds another interpretation to the heated but normal course of the struggle in Congress, highlighting how the second vice president managed to redirect the debate toward a fundamental reflection on the country's model. "It's about how to distribute productivity in the era of artificial intelligence, robotics, and algorithms," summarized a Sumar leader yesterday, convinced that this is the battle that will allow us to move beyond a single parliamentary defeat.

It's undeniable that Sumar's optimistic narrative also weighs heavily on the need for political survival. Despite the slight rebound in recent months, most polls show that the confederal group has lost approximately half of its estimated vote share compared to the June 23 results.

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However, the coincidence of the setback in the reduction of working hours with the approval of new maternity and childcare leave, and Pedro Sánchez's acceptance of many of the measures proposed by Sumar against Israel, allow the party's leadership to boast about the social impact that "is beginning to mark this second half of the term." Furthermore, it fuels hope that the rebound in the polls may continue.

After two complicated years, Sumar is learning to navigate turbulent waters. And faced with the paralysis it suffered with each parliamentary setback, it is now rushing to adjust its sails to stay on course for a project that, it assures, still has the wind at its back.

Institutional cooperation after the fires

Second Vice President and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, met yesterday in San Vicente de Leira with mayors and residents of the Valdeorras region (Ourense), recently affected by the fires that ravaged the province. From there, Díaz called on the local authorities to "join hands" and "put their arguments aside" to focus on "getting to work." The leader of Sumar (Sumar Party) praised the presence of local representatives "of all stripes," calling the meeting an example of institutional cooperation. "This is what useful politics is; the rest is other things," she added in statements to the press, in which she also insisted on the need for "multiple policies" and "prevention policies" throughout the year, with brigades receiving adequate training to combat the "new characteristics of fires."