Do we like them?

Do we like Yolanda Díaz?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A solid record on migrants, workers and trans rights, marked down because I could only skim the sources and a messy defamation fight is still live.

Díaz is Spain's labour minister and deputy prime minister, and her signature fight has been for workers. Her push to cut the legal working week to 37.5 hours with no pay cut made headlines worldwide, but it stalled because she couldn't line up the votes in Congress.

In February 2026 she announced she would not be a candidate in the 2027 general election, which forced her Sumar platform to regroup. It's a big call for the woman who once pitched herself as Spain's possible first female prime minister.

On the harm check she does well. In 2022 she said you don't play games with rights, trans people's included, while pushing for the trans law. She has also argued for regularising roughly 500,000 undocumented migrants and welcomed the 2026 deal to do it, and I found no harmful words from her on LGBTQ+ people, women or the planet.

Her messiest current stoush is with Julio Iglesias, who says her public comments about him damaged his honour. She refused to retract them at a conciliation hearing, so he went to the Supreme Court, which handles cases involving her because of her office. No court has ruled, so the €50,000 is just what he's asking for.

She's also been a target of fakes: Maldita.es debunked a viral claim that she called tennis star Carlos Alcaraz a traitor. On the dodgy-politics front, she has distanced Sumar from the corruption cases around the Socialists, saying its ministries are clean, which her critics in the PP answer by accusing her of silence.