A united left Will Yolanda Díaz be first female PM?

As Spain enters an election year that will include municipal, regional and national votes, the woman who is, according to polls, its most popular politician is touring the country to build support for leftwing candidates.

- Stephen Burgen BARCELONA

Yolanda Díaz, the deputy prime minister and a lifelong member of the Communist party, is heading Sumar (Unite), a platform to the left of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, that plans to field candidates at the general election due on 10 December.

Last Saturday, 2,000 people filled the Auditori in Barcelona to hear Díaz speak, while a further 1,000 were turned away. She made her entrance to pounding, Rocky-style music and a standing ovation alongside Ada Colau, the Barcelona mayor and a leading supporter of the Sumar project.

Colau introduced Díaz, saying she represented "hope and the prospect of utopia". She said: "Yolanda gives us the right to dream and to hope. We hope she will be the first woman prime minister of Spain."

Díaz lost no time in reassuring her Catalan audience that she recognised that 40% of people in the region would like to secede from Spain.