As someone who voted for her in the last general election & who is a lifelong sympathizer of the Spanish Left, raised by sympathizers of the Spanish Left, I thank her for making this decision, our chances of avoiding a MAGA government in the next election are slim, but maybe a new leadership may help change that.
Here is the letter translated to English:
Dear friends,
I want to share an important decision with you. We are living through a moment of democratic exceptionalism and profound changes all over the world. In this time, Spain’s Government is becoming an inspiration—an example that it is possible to do things differently.
In recent years, in government we have achieved things that, when I began my work as a minister, seemed impossible. We have brought unemployment down below 10%, with record numbers of people in work and very high rates of open-ended hiring. The labour market in our country has changed, thanks to what we have achieved from the Government and from the Ministry of Labour and Social Economy. We have raised the minimum wage by 66% to €1,221 with fiscal justice, we have protected the productive fabric with the ERTE schemes, and the recovery of workers’ purchasing power has boosted the economy.
At a time when the rights of women and LGBTQI+ people are threatened and questioned, our country has continued moving forward hand in hand with feminism. For the first time we have recognised the rights of domestic workers; for the first time we have legislated on the labour rights of LGBTQI+ people; we have increased leave for birth and care to 22 weeks (32 in single-parent families); and we have achieved more than 10 million working women while also reducing the gender gap by 21%.
Youth poverty has fallen from 28.3% to 20.9%. Today there are almost one million fewer people in precarious employment. Inequality has also been reduced to historic lows. And all of this while Spain is growing at 2.8%, double the European average.
In the coming months, that work will continue taking steps forward and building rights—through the Statute for interns or through working-time recording. There is still much to do. In these very weeks, amid a gigantic advance of hate politics across the world, we announced the regularisation of half a million migrant people living in our country. While Trump deports migrants, Spain is a welcoming country that regularises them.
We have done it with humility, with work, and with enormous effort. We have achieved what we were told was impossible to achieve. When I began my work as a minister, I did so with one objective in mind, with a clear horizon: to serve the working women and working men of my country. Every time I have felt that strength weaken—every moment of doubt, every conflict—it has been the compass of workers that has shown me the way.
I always had many reservations about the idea of being a candidate. Politics is hard, especially for women, but I do not regret having taken the step. I look back and I am proud of everything we have achieved collectively, always working to improve people’s lives.
I will keep doing so, but today I want to announce to you that I will not be a candidate in the next general elections of 2027. It is a very considered decision, and I have communicated it to my loved ones, to my entire political space, and to the President of the Government.
I took the step to lead Sumar in 2023 thinking of the enormous embrace of the working women and working men of our country. We said then that without Sumar there would be no coalition government, and we managed to revalidate a government that all the polls had given up for lost.
These days I keep thinking that this force—this embrace and this coming together—is what we must build and defend. I will continue working in government to fulfil that mandate from the ballot box and to move forward on everything we still have left to do.
While in government we continue doing our work, new paths are opening to breathe life and hope into the progressive space. We saw it on February 18, with the timely and ambitious debate opened by Gabriel Rufián; and we saw it on the 21st, with the confirmation that the political space that Sumar set in motion remains strong, with a vocation for majorities and a will for agreement and social progress. It is time to expand democracy and fill it with meaning and hope. That is what we need. That energy—of which today we are seeing the first glimmers—needs to grow.
I also want to give space and time so that what is being born can move forward with the strength it deserves—and to accompany it, care for it, and drive it with all my energy and with the strength my conviction gives me. And I also want to look after the progressive coalition government, because to look after it is to look after the best tool we have to keep winning rights.
Politics has been the air I breathed in my home, the words with which I learned to speak in a home full of democracy, culture, dignity, and love for what we share in common.
The politics I learned at home is the one I have always practiced and still practice. It is the strength of my land, Galicia, and of my language, Galician. That part of me is one piece of a larger puzzle.
We have a beautiful and diverse country, built from many pieces, from many intertwined histories. A country that will not allow its future to be twisted. A country that will not let its will be taken away.
I feel very proud of what we have done, but I am aware that there is still much to do. The pending task is to win the country—clearly, with affection, with tenderness, without fear. As we have done until now.
Yolanda Díaz Pérez
25 February 2026
Posted by mikelmon99