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No Change in Spain: New Vote Reflects a Still Divided Electorate
Jun 26, 2016
The Spaniards went back to the ballot boxes today, six months after their December 20 general elections concluded without a majority winner.
In December, the conservative Partido Popular (Popular Party, PP) and the socialist party (Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol, PSOE) were uprooted from their nearly 40-year hegemony by new parties on the left (Podemos, We Can) and right (Ciudadanos, Citizens) (see Common Dreams, December 21, 2015). They came in first, second, third, and forth, respectively, with the sitting PP government left in charge until either a majority parliamentary coalition could be formed or new elections were held.
Mud and slogan slinging ensued. Multiple rounds of negotiations among the leading parties to form a coalition were held. Meanwhile, a dysfunctional parliament served as a stage for hurling recriminations at each other for the failures of those talks. Rancorous televised debates only exacerbated the polarization, leaving a large portion of the electorate increasingly disenchanted. Finally, King Felipe the Sixth, the arbiter in this constitutional monarchy, threw in the towel and called for new elections.
With 99% of today's (June 26) vote counted, the major difference in the outcome was a gain in overall conservative votes, with a shift of votes from neoliberal newcomer Ciudadanos back to the PP, while, on the left, PSOE lost votes and an leftist alliance lead by Podemos, obtained results similar to their December outcomes.
The PP, which ruled with an absolute majority since deposing the PSOE in 2011, still comes out on top, with 33% of the vote and 137 out of 350 possible seats in the president-determining Congress of Deputies, an improvement of 14 seats since December. Ciudadanos, campaigning as fervently against PP corruption as against Podemos ideology, fell to 32 seats, losing 8, by pulling in just 13% of the vote.
Pre-election polls just a week ago predicted that an alliance of Podemos and its affiliated regional parties with the United Left (Izquierda Unida, IU) and Equo, a reformulated party of Greens, would comfortably supplanted the PSOE at second place and pave the way for leftist coalition at the head of government. But this prediction turned out to be strikingly inaccurate.
The PSOE, in charge when the global crisis pricked the Spanish credit and real estate bubble in 2008, held on to 85 seats with 23% of the vote, 5 seats less than its December result. The Podemos-led alliance, Unidos Podemos (United We Can), took 21% of the vote and 71 seats, essentially equaling the added results of Podemos and the IU when the parties ran separately in December.
Most of the balance of seats were won by either leftist (9 seats) or conservative (8 seats) pro-independence Catalonian parties.
Now the negotiations for a coalition government begin anew, but with the math no less complicated.
Before the elections, the four leading parties pledged to a weary electorate that a third round of elections would not be necessary - that a coalition, however grudgingly, would be formed. But as the leaders of Unidos Podemos and the PSOE appeared before the public this evening to concede their disappointment, there was a palpable pessimism that a progressive coalition government could be an outcome.
Indeed, if the leaders of the top parties honor their pledges not to repeat elections, only a PP-PSOE or a PSOE-Unidos Podemos-Ciudadanos coalition would have sufficient seats for an absolute majority.
After the December vote, a grand coalition of all the leftist parties would have included pro-separatist Catalonian ones, unacceptable to the PSOE. Although those parties could have been left out of the coalition and might have abstained from a parliamentary vote on the presidency, enabling a PSOE-Podemos simple majority, the PSOE opted to reach across ideological lines to conservative newcomer Ciudadanos, with the vain hope that Podemos would join them.
But this was a non-starter for the Podemos leadership, who were unwilling to collaborate with any form of the right, at least not without stronger incentives in terms of top government posts. It was clear they preferred their chances in new elections, with the renewed goal of outflanking the PSOE to become the left's standard bearer.
During the election interlude, new corruption cases surfaced at their usual weekly-or-so pace, old ones took new twists, and the Catalonian independence movement, with a separatist regional government now in power, moved, if only shakily, forward.
Among the scandals, a minister of the PP government was forced to resign due to revelations from the Panama Papers, another PP minister was taped colluding with the Catalonian anti-corruption office to dig up dirt specifically on separatist leaders, and two former PSOE presidents of the autonomous community (like a state in the US) of Andalucia sunk deeper into an ongoing embezzlement case. In another judiciary investigation, the PP was forced to pay a deposit of 1.24 million EUR before further testimony in a case involving undeclared PP finances, with its former party treasurer already in jail.
For all of that, and a joblessness rate second only to EU whipping boy Greece, the economy continued to inch forward in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and new jobs, bolstering the PP's claim that they were on the right path. However, a leaked letter from sitting President Mariano Rajoy to European Union (EU) Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker gave the lie to their campaign pledge of no further budget cuts. It clearly suggested that more austerity measures would follow a PP win in June, ostensibly to avoid a hefty fine for exceeding the EU-imposed deficit ceiling of 3% of its GDP.
But, for all uproar outside the party, the expose fell on deaf ears within the party's base and Rajoy's poll numbers didn't budge. After all, they may have concluded, what's better than a good, comforting lie? Or, as one PP voter here in the northern autonomous community of Asturias told me, with a dismissive wave of his hand, "Who cares? They all do it!"
And, indeed, the other party leaders did little to polish their public images during the election interlude. Between the acrimonious TV debates and those in the parliament, the polls reflected that a substantial portion of the electorate found most of them disingenuous and uncompromising.
Given the PP's impervious base, it was perhaps the PSOE's Pedro Sanchez and Podemos's Pablo Iglesias who were more tarnished by the frays. Sanchez's initial charm as a new face in the PSOE simply wore thin, as did his party's hardly credible mantra of "vote for change."
Though not as discredited as the French socialists, whose labor reforms have ignited massive strikes and protests across France in recent weeks, many who have fled the PSOE no doubt recall that it was the PSOE that began budget cuts after 2008, at the bidding of the EU, before handing the reins to the PP in 2011.
But it was Iglesias who really had to roll with punches, which came at him from both the left and the right. After railing against the old "caste" systems of the PP and PSOE since the inception of Podemos in 2014, he has been accused by some on the left as being the leader of a "new caste" system, due to his strong-arm handling of the party direction at times. More theatrically, Podemos has been branded a party of Bolivarian revolutionists by both the socialists and the right, based on consulting contracts its founders had with the Chavez Venezuelan government years before the party was formed. The red-baiting surged again after their alliance with the IU, with its origins in the dissolved Communist Party of Spain.
But as local IU secretary Manolo Villar told me at a Unidos Podemos rally here in the industrial port town of Gijon this week, "We are not calling for an anti-capitalist revolution."
And, in fact, it was Obama, not Marx, who was invoked repeatedly by Unidos Podemos to explain a key concept in their economic plan: stimulus spending. But as a Eurozone country, they can't simply print money and sell bonds, as did the US. So where would the money come from?
Unlike any of their rivals - and notoriously the PP - they were very specific and honest about where: increased taxes. They proposed a higher tax rate on the top wage and investment income brackets and fewer tax breaks. A restructuring of the public debt would provide an additional source of funds. Among other projects, the revenue would be invested in public infrastructure, small and large business start-ups, science and technology research, and renewable energy development. It would also be used to provide a suite of economic aide measures for the long-term jobless and very poor, the spending of which would funnel the money back into local economies.
"Change will be slow," Villar told me. "We need to work within the existing institutions. What the United Left has fought for in the past and what we are fighting for now with Podemos is an economy with more justice and dignity for its workers. One could be pessimistic about our chances, but why not be optimistic? As the writer Coelho said, the optimist and the pessimist both die in the end!"
Looking over the wobbly sociopolitical state of the European Union these days - from a faltering Greece to an exiting UK, with a million refugees in between and nationalist fervor on the rise - it certainly looks like its cemeteries will not be short of former pessimists for the foreseeable future.
More than optimism, Podemos's Pablo Iglesias expressed pragmatism in his post-election speech, a need to look critically at the results of their campaign, and to communicate their message better.
That won't be easy.
They must convince a cynical public that - in spite of the dictums of the EU or Standard & Poor - the way forward toward a truly sustainable economy is to roll back the labor and social "reform" laws of the last five years, laws that left workers more vulnerable than ever to the vicissitudes of global financial markets.
They must convince not just their rank-and-file but a majority of Spaniards that investment in renewable energy, research, and education creates jobs, jobs in which workers are not viewed simply as disposable commodities useful for lowering interest rates and maximizing profits, but as participants in a healthy, transparent democracy.
After the Unidos Podemos rally earlier this week, Villar left me with another quote, one from Portuguese Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago, which he said captured the win-or-lose sentiment of progressive struggles:
"Defeat has something positive: it is never final; however, victory has something negative: it is never final."
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With New Vision for Europe, Rising Podemos Threatens to Upend Establishment
Ahead of Sunday elections, Spain's anti-austerity movement successfully shattered the era of two-party dominance
Jun 22, 2016
Spain's Podemos party, which rose to prominence on a defiant anti-austerity platform in recent years, has overtaken one of the nation's two leading political powerhouses and is threatening to unseat the conservative establishment in Sunday's general election.
Polls on Monday suggest that the populist party successfully has shattered the era of two-party dominance, besting the Socialist Party (PSOE) 25 to 21.2 percent. In comparison, the ruling conservative Popular Party (PP) still leads with 30.7 percent.
"We are very close to defeating the Popular Party in the elections," Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias declared. "We are very close. And they are very worried about it for what it means."
Indeed, Spain's conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy expressed as much during a campaign stop Monday, telling supporters, "Radicalism and extremism can only be stopped by a coalition of people behind the Popular Party." To block the rise of Podemos, Rajoy called on "all moderate, sensible and balanced voters to unite" by casting their vote on Sunday.
The latest poll by research website Electograph reflects a four percent increase in support for the outsider movement since December's election, during which Podemos secured 69 parliament seats. That upset effectively fractured the majority, forcing the king of Spain to dissolve parliament and hold another vote.
While the various parties have been jockeying to form coalitions, Podemos "has boosted its support by striking a deal with the United Left, once part of the Communist party," Euronews explains, creating the ascendant Unidos Podemos coalition.
"What is uncertain amid the maneuvering is the shape of a future government," Euronews continues. "What seems highly likely is that Spain's traditional two-party system looks set to be blown apart."
The elections will come amid a turbulent week in Europe following the upcoming UK vote on the so-called "Brexit" referendum. As the Guardian's Owen Jones wrote on Tuesday, the two votes "highlight the competing visions of Europe's future."
Declaring this week a "defining moment" in postwar Europe, Jones continues:
Across Europe, the visions represented by the rightwing Brexiters in Britain and Podemos in Spain are locked in combat. If Britain leaves the EU as the result of a leave campaign whose core message is hostility to immigration, that will be a shot in the arm to already ascendant anti-immigration movements across Europe. The question isn't whether France's far-right leader Marine Le Pen will celebrate Brexit, but how expensive will be the champagne she chooses to toast it with. The odds of the EU disintegrating amid anti-immigrant and anti-refugee acrimony will increase. If Unidos Podemos do well in Spain on Sunday--and even forms a coalition government with the Socialists--then that will be a significant boost to movements arguing for a Europe of public investment and workers' rights.
"Are we to have a disintegrating Europe characterized by widespread, destructive, anti-immigrant resentment, corporate dominance, and shredded social protection or a democratic Europe run in the interests of the majority?" he concludes. "The people of Britain and Spain can light the way."
Earlier this month, Podemos published a catalog-styled manifesto detailing its key political stances, such as plans to reduce unemployment and increase taxes on the wealthy, against a backdrop of Ikea-like images.
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For Spain's Podemos, People Take Priority Over Politics
Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias wants to push "social emergency" law when parliament reconvenes January 13
Dec 28, 2015
The leader of Spain's left-wing Podemos party on Monday said his priority when parliament reconvenes in early January will be to help the poor--not to hash out internal power struggles among political parties.
This month's Spanish elections, in which anti-austerity Podemos picked up a surprisingly high 69 seats, "blew apart the cozy arrangement that has existed in Spain since the return to democracy in the late 1970s, which has allowed the right-wing Popular Party (PP) and the leftist Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) to swap power on regular occasions," Alistair Dawber wrote for The Independent on Friday.
"Thanks to [Podemos leader Pablo] Iglesias, neither party can now govern alone," Dawber explained. "If the two traditional parties can reach an agreement - and that is by no means likely - Podemos will emerge as the main opposition group in Spain. If a grand coalition does not work, there is a good chance Podemos and Iglesias will enter government as part of a leftist alliance. Either way, the man has already won and has changed Spain for good."
After meeting with acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Monday, Iglesias appears ready to shake things up even further.
According to Agence France-Presse, Iglesias "refused to talk of forming alliances" after the meeting.
"Instead," AFP reports, "he said the priority for Podemos when parliament reconvenes on January 13 will be to help the poor by proposing a 'social emergency' law that prevents families from being evicted for not paying their mortgage or ensures pensioners can buy their medicine."
Iglesias accused the Socialists--who say they will form an alliance with Podemos only if the party abandons its support for an independence referendum in the wealthy northeastern region of Catalonia--"of being more preoccupied with internal power struggles than with the interests of voters," AFP adds.
He also blasted Socialist party leader Pedro Sanchez, whom he noted "needed 20 minutes to say 'no' to Rajoy. I needed two."
According to The Spain Report, which covers Spanish news in English:
He repeatedly positioned Podemos in contrast to the Popular Party and PSOE as establishment parties: "This is not about talking about power but about the problems of Spain", and added [the center-right, business-friendly] Ciudadanos to the group.
"There is an immovable block of three that repeats old arguments and ignores inequality and corruption."
"We don't share any ideas of what Spain is", said Mr. Iglesias, adding that his conversation with Pedro Sanchez had been "very disappointing".
Weeks of uncertainty lay ahead. The BBC explains, "Next month, King Felipe VI will seek to nominate a party leader for government, but that leader must then win a vote of confidence in parliament. If there is deadlock two months after that, the king will call for a fresh election."
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On Verge of Victory, Europe's Ascendant Left Declares 'Subservience is Over'
Joining together ahead of Greek elections, leaders of Syriza and Podemos signal their unified fight against austerity will extend beyond national borders
Jan 23, 2015
"History is knocking at our door," declared Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the leftwing coalition party of Syriza in Greece, during a speech addressed to thousands of supporters in Athens on Thursday night as he stood next to his foreign compatriot Pablo Iglesias of the Spanish Podemos Party.
"The wind of democratic change is blowing in Europe."
--Pablo Iglesias, Podemos
Syriza and Podemos have become the mouthpiece of the anti-austerity movement in southern Europe while Tsipras and Iglesias have emerged as key political leaders who emerged from the grassroots, street-level protest movements which rose in opposition to the severe economic policies imposed by elite forces following the financial crisis that began in 2008. In relatively short time, both Syriza and Podemos went from being non-existent political entities to standing on the doorstep of taking power.
With national elections in Greece just days away, and Syriza's polling numbers only improving, Alexis Tsipras announced that his party is prepared to "overthrow" the status quo and vowed to implement swift changes to undo the austerity policies--imposed at the behest of foreign creditors and attached to a bailout package offered by the European Central Bank and the IMF--that have left the Greek economy in tatters. Standing before the large crowd, Tsipras announced that by Monday, "[Greece's] national humiliation will be over. We will finish with orders from abroad."
Syriza's answer to austerity, he continued, would be this: "The bailout is over. Blackmail is over. Subservience is over."
According to reporting by the Irish Times, Tsipras "received one of his biggest cheers of the night when he said that he will press for the repayment of a forced war loan from Greece to Germany during the second World War.
Taking the podium to address the thousands gathered, Iglesias indicated the fate of the Greek and Spanish people--both crushed by unemployment and the gutting of the public sector--were intimately tied. But, Iglesias declared, "The wind of democratic change is blowing in Europe." Less than one year since its inception, Podemos is now polling ahead of Spain's ruling party. Though national elections in Spain could happen later this year, they have not yet been scheduled.
A sampling of voices taken from the crowd in Athens reveal that those supporting what Podemos and Syriza represent are ecstatic for the hope the parties are now offering.
"I am voting for Tsipras because even my parents, after 40 years of work, don't have money to pay for heating," Maria Labridou, a 55-year-old teacher at the rally, told Reuters. "He is our only hope, the only way out."
Speaking with the Irish Times, a retiree named Babis, said, "We want change not only in Greece, but across Europe. The change will start from here, and then go through Spain, Portugal and Ireland. There has to be social justice."
A continental view was not absent among the politicians on the stage either as Leonard Cohen's famous protest song, 'First We Take Manhattan,' played from the loudspeakers and Iglesias at one point declared, "Then we take Berlin!"
Ahead of the Greek election on Sunday, the latest polling in the country shows Syriza has built on its previous lead over the ruling New Democracy party, now led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.
As Helena Smith reports for the Guardian on Friday:
Barely four weeks after the failure of parliament to elect a president, triggering the ballot, Greece's fate now lies in the hands of 9.8 million voters. All the polls show, with growing conviction, that victory will go to Syriza. A poll released by GPO for Mega TV late on Thursday gave the far leftists a six-percentage-point lead over Samaras's center-right New Democracy, the dominant force in a coalition government that has held power since June 2012. A week earlier, GPO had the lead at four percentage points. [...]
Analysts maintain that Syriza's ability to attain an outright majority will be difficult. With pressure mounting from the EU and IMF to "respect" the commitments made as the price of aid, speculation has been rife that the party might prefer to enter a coalition government that would enable it to forge ahead with the structural reforms and budget cuts demanded in exchange for the biggest financial assistance program in global history.
But Tsipras put paid to that. The leftists, who have never held office in the near 200 years of the Modern Greek state - and who, after a bloody civil war, were hounded and imprisoned for decades - wanted to win an absolute majority that would allow them to govern unimpeded, he insisted.
"We are asking for a clear mandate, crystal clear, undiluted, indisputable," he told the crowd. "The time of the left has come."
Dr Eleni Panagiotarea, a research fellow at Greece's leading thinktank Eliamep, said Syriza was on a roll.
"It's now all about making a clean break with the past. The party has picked up on the fatigue that people feel with the country. It has become a voice for the disgruntled middle class, unemployed, socially vulnerable, all those who want change."
Though Prime Minister Samaras has tried to counter the rise of Syriza by telling Greek voters that its leftwing policies will lead the nation to ruin, experts and economists argue that it has been the austerity policies imposed across Europe, though most severely imposed in nations like Greece and Spain, that have been the clearest culprits of economic ruin.
As Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy research, wrote earlier this week:
Greece continues to face a dismal future under the current European program, with more than 18 percent unemployment even in 2017. This is according to IMF projections, which have been consistently over-optimistic in the past. Mass unemployment will also be the norm for the eurozone, with more than 10 percent unemployment in 2017, even if it the eurozone authorities' program is "successful." Not to mention all the other sacrifices in living standards, including cuts in health care spending, public pensions, minimum wages and government services.
This prolonged punishment and regressive social engineering from the European authorities is only possible because the electorate has had little or no influence over the most important economic policy-making. The Greeks are trying to win some of that back; hence the intimidation from on high.
And Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, in a recent column, called the commitment to austerity by European elites--namely the IMF, the ECB, the European Commission, and the powerful German government--a very cruel form of "economic madness" that betrays sound reasoning.
Stiglitz wrote, "If Europe does not change its ways - if it does not reform the Eurozone and repeal austerity - a popular backlash will become inevitable." Whatever happens in the Greek elections, he concluded, "this economic madness cannot continue forever. Democracy will not permit it. But how much more pain will Europe have to endure before reason is restored?"
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Thomas Piketty: Strong Anti-Austerity Parties Are Just What Europe Needs
French economist celebrates rise of Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece as antidote to punishing economic policies pushed by elites
Jan 12, 2015
The prominent French economist Thomas Piketty says the rise of new the anti-austerity political parties in southern Europe, including Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece, are just what the European economy needs in order to push back against the tide of regressive economic policies that have punished the continent's most vulnerable people at the behest of the wealthy and powerful.
In an hour-long interview set to air later this month with Pablo Iglesias, the de facto leader of Podemos, Piketty argues that the increasing popularity and political power of the leftwing populist parties--which have built their base of support around a rejection of austerity measures--is "good news for Europe."
Piketty, author of last year's bestselling book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," argues Europe's fixation with austerity since 2008 has been a "failure" for the economy and said those challenging such policies are doing a great and important service.
In a boon to Podemos, Piketty has agreed to act as an economic advisor to the party, which Iglesias said was "an honor" and would surely benefit their overall economic thinking.
Speaking of Syriza in Greece, Piketty said that though portions of their economic plan remain murky, "You have to offer them support because they want to build a democratic Europe, which is what we all need."
Summarizing portions of the interview, the Guardian reports:
Piketty described austerity policies as "a failure" and supported the Podemos agenda of a basic income for those most affected by the crisis as well as restructuring debt, a policy that has been heavily criticised by Spain's hitherto dominant parties, the Socialists and the Partido Popular.
He pointed out that at the end of the second world war France and Germany's debt was 200% of GDP, "when there was no such thing as public debt". "It's incredible," Piketty said. "It's an act of historical amnesia to tell southern European countries that they have to pay all their debt, down to the last cent, with zero inflation."
The economist believes that European countries have tried to get rid of their deficits too quickly. The result is that "their citizens have suffered the consequences in the shape of austerity policies. It's good to reduce deficits, but at a rate that's commensurate with growth and economic recovery, but here growth has been killed off."
Last week Piketty poured cold water on the Spanish government's claims that the crisis was over and insisted the eurozone still faced the risk of stagnation, weak growth and negative inflation.
Recent polls in Greece and Spain have shown both Podemos and Syriza maintaining high-levels of support. Greeks are going to the polls on January 25 to vote for a new parliament. Spanish general elections are not yet set, but could happen before end of the year.
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Poll: Leader of Anti-Austerity Podemos Party Could Be Spain's Next Prime Minister
Speaking out forcefully against regressive economic policies that have devastated Spanish economy, Pablo Iglesias and his party have experienced meteoric rise in popularity in just one year
Jan 09, 2015
Revealing the country's increasing resistance to austerity, nearly half of Spanish voters support the rising left-wing Podemos Party's de facto leader Pablo Iglesias for Prime Minister, according to a poll published Friday by radio station Cadena Ser.
If an election for Prime Minister were held right now, Iglesias would receive 44 percent of the votes, the survey showed--almost twice as much as Spain's current president, Mariano Rajoy of the Popular Party, who would net 23 percent.
The poll also found that 27.5 of Spaniards would vote for the Podemos Party in the upcoming general elections, set to take place on or before December 20, 2015.
Political analysts have noted that the unexpected ascent of Podemos (translated "We Can") may have broken Spain's traditional two-party structure, a phenomenon particularly noteworthy given that the party was formed just over a year ago ahead of elections for European Parliament in which it captured a surprising five of the Spanish delegation's seats.
Podemos built its platform on measures that fight against skyrocketing public debt, austerity cuts, and forced privatization programs. Such policies have been on the rise across Europe since the financial crash in 2008, but have sparked mass protests in numerous countries including Spain, Greece, Italy, and the U.K.
"It is clear that in Spain, as well as Greece, there is a tendency to reject the economic policies adopted by Europe," Eric Toussaint, a political scientist at the University of Liege and president of the Belgian arm of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, told Al Jazeera on Thursday. "There is a push on the left side of the political spectrum for radical solutions, which will lead towards a certain rupture with the capitalist system."
Many of Podemos' supporters are those who previously voted for the Popular Party, but others are switching allegiances from left-wing groups like Socialist Workers' Party and United Left, as well as the more centrist UPyD and Ciudadanos--all of whom would take less than 6 percent of the vote if it were held today, the poll showed.
Yet more support--36 percent--came from voters who had never cast an election ballot before.
Cadena Ser's survey comes shortly after another poll conducted by the newspaper La Razon found the Popular Party still in the lead among voters, with the Socialist Workers' Party in second place and Podemos in third.
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!Podemos! Spanish Party Rises from Grassroots to Challenge Corruption of Elite Party Rule
In tandem with other rising parties of the Left in Europe, supporters of new political party in Spain have organized their way to doorstep of power
Dec 29, 2014
The ascendent leftwing Syriza Party in Greece is not the only progressive party in Europe seeing an increase in its popularity and political might on the basis of a consistent, two-pronged anti-austerity and pro-democracy platform.
In Spain, the fledgling Podemos Party (translated as 'We can') has been surging in public opinion polls since it officially formed earlier this year and now, according to a profile and analysis published in Reuters on Monday, it may be on the verge of 'overturning' the two-party hold enjoyed by the ruling People's Party (PP), led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, and the standing opposition Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE). The fast rise of Podemos, according to Reuters, has forced "the center-right government to veer away from austerity and the left-leaning opposition to scramble for new leaders."
"We want to seize local, regional and national power. We want to blow over the political chessboard and move the pieces around."
--Luis Maestre, Podemos member in Madrid
Co-founded by university professor and talk show host Pablo Iglesias, other leftist academics and participants of the Indignados movement that was born in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis in Europe, Podemos joined the political fray during elections for the European Parliament in May. Surprising many, Podemos candidates, including Iglesias, won fives seats. Since then, its political impact has continued to grow. Domestically, the party entered national politics by challenging the status quo with a very particular brand of street-savvy politics backed by a grassroots organizing effort.
As Reuters reports:
Podemos has set up hundreds of local assemblies known as "circulos" across the country, staging unruly weekly meetings at which Spaniards can vent the anger built up during worst economic crisis since World War Two.
"The one thing we all share is the outrage over what's going on in Spain," said Jose Luis Soriano, a 32-year old unemployed computer scientist who has been coming to the circulo in the upscale Madrid neighborhood of Salamanca since the summer.
The Salamanca circulo now has about 500 members. Each week about 50 people attend its meetings in a rented private school classroom. They come from all walks of life and political backgrounds: pensioners, students, housewives, executives.
"I like the fact that they're open to debate, transparent and want to change this rotten system," said Soriano.
Those who attend describe the meetings as an experiment in democracy. There is no leader; members can attend whenever they like and they vote on everything - from organizing a Christmas contest with local shops to choosing who will be their representative, to their policy platform in a local election.
National elections in Spain in 2015 will give Podemos their first real chance at taking hold of large segments of parliament and some polling suggests they could, in fact, take majority control. Like their counterparts in Greece--with whom they regularly communicate and have supported politically within the European Parliament--the members of Podemos have largely based their critique of the ruling class and political leaders on the negative impact that imposed austerity measures have had on the Spanish economy and people, especially the young. Podemos has also lashed out against government corruption and what it characterizes as a "caste system" which dominates domestic politics.
In the wake of Monday's announcement from Greece that new general elections will be held early in the new year, Iglesias tweeted his support for Syriza and their leader Alexis Tsipras, saying, "2015 will be year of change in Europe. We'll start from Greece. C'mon SYRIZA."
As an editorial by the right-leaning The Spain Report noted on Monday, the financial elites and establishment figures of the European Union may not like the rise of Podemos and Syriza, but "They're coming anyway, and they want to bring radical change not only to the Spanish and Greek systems but to the whole European project."
And that fear among the establishment is not necessarily unfounded.
Speaking with Reuters, Luis Maestre, a 56-year old civil servant who voted for the socialists and the communists for 40 years, said he now wants to run for a seat in Madrid town hall under the Podemos banner.
"The system can only be changed from the inside," Maestre said. "We want to seize local, regional and national power. We want to blow over the political chessboard and move the pieces around."
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New Left Rising: EU Elections Shake Up Socialists in Spain
Things got shaken up quite a bit in Spanish politics last week, as they did in much of the European Union. The Union's parliamentary elections, held just over a week ago, exposed massive discontent toward the traditional ruling parties and were followed by a week of mea culpa's, resignations, restructuring, and nasty infighting.
Jun 05, 2014
Things got shaken up quite a bit in Spanish politics last week, as they did in much of the European Union. The Union's parliamentary elections, held just over a week ago, exposed massive discontent toward the traditional ruling parties and were followed by a week of mea culpa's, resignations, restructuring, and nasty infighting.
The more important implications of the results lie less in the composition of the new parliament, relatively low on the EU power totem poll, than in each country's upcoming regional and national elections. De facto two-party systems that exist in many of the 28 EU states, despite their European-style multiparty look, are at risk, as smaller parties grow and new alliances form.
In many states, nationalist, leftwing, or simply anti-EU parties advanced at the expense of both center-right conservative and center-left socialist parties. Openly anti-immigrant nationalist parties gained alarming ground in countries with relatively long histories of immigration and foreigner scapegoating, such as France, Denmark, Holland, Greece, Austria, and Britain. But parties with platforms that were simply anti-EU or more left-leaning than the mainstream socialists, such as in Italy, Greece, and Spain, also gained footing.
Here in Spain, it was the left that siphoned votes from the Socialists (Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol, PSOE), who happened to be holding the bag during the first few years of the economic meltdown after 2008. In 2011, an angry electorate voted them out and the conservative Partido Popular (PP) in. An absolute majority allowed the PP, without parliamentary debate, to do the bidding of the European Central Bank and European Commission. They enacted drastic budget cuts, raised income and consumer taxes, and, undeterred by repeated national strikes and massive street protests, ran roughshod over decades of social and labor law gains.
But unemployment, currently over 26%, continued to rise above the now tattered social safety net, in step with record mortgage foreclosures, home evictions, and an exodus of skilled and educated workers to more prosperous countries. The PP's attempt to sell their policies as successful, based on the fact that the decimated economy is no longer contracting and investors are now willing to buy their bonds at lower rates, has been met with widespread cynicism outside their rank and file. "You can't eat interest rates," is a sentiment that was widely echoed in the media. In the EU elections held in Spain on May 24, the PP won only 16 of 54 seats available to Spain, down 8 seats from their 2009 results.
But it was the PSOE, hoping to turn the tables on the PP, that fell the flattest, winning only 14 seats, 9 less than in 2009. The simple and oft-repeated campaign message from top PSOE candidate Elena Valenciano - that the PSOE is different than the PP - apparently did not get through, nor was it supported by the seemingly monthly revelations of new corruption scandals involving either the PSOE or the PP, on an nearly equal basis, over the last decade or so. Moreover, left-leaning voters have other places to go in Spain. And that's where they went. The United Left (Izquierda Unida), long the 3rd most voted-for party in Spain, formed alliances with other smaller leftist parties and captured 6 seats, 3 more than in 2009.
Other progressive parties gained traction, too, but the big surprise was the success of one that came into existence only 4 months before the election, Podemos ("We can" ). Podemos grabbed 5 seats (8% of the total vote) by promising, among other things, to close tax loop holes for corporations and invest the extra revenues in research, greater government transparency, and an end to the politician-corporate board member revolving door.
Led by a young and ponytailed university professor, Pablo Iglesias, Podemos obviously lit a populist fire. Iglesias cut his media teeth as a frequent political talk show guest before the launch of the party, and far from faux-folksy or prone to "soaring rhetoric," his style is dead serious, fact-filled, and laser sharp. When he takes on what he calls the political "caste" system, there is inevitably some leftist sloganeering, but his grasp of the complexity of the business-labor-government equation is clear.
Though it remains to be shown that its momentum can be sustained, talk of alliances between Podemos and other progressive parties last week has already sent tremors through the PSOE and PP. While the PP leadership has predictably attempted to minimize its impact, with one presidential advisor calling its members frikis (freaks, in the idealist hippie sense), the PSOE has been forced to take them more seriously.
Socialist icon Felipe Gonzalez, the first majority leader who became president after the restoration of democracy in the 70's, warned the nation of the "catastrophic" dangers of "Bolivarian alternatives influenced by regressive utopias." Not surprising, considering that the dangers of Podemos are already clear and present within the PSOE. The leftist victories have already led to the resignation of PSOE secretary general Alfredo Rubalcaba, followed by a series of botched attempts last week to stop the internal bleeding, with internecine fallouts and maneuvering to topple the old guard.
Looking to their neighbors to the north or east, one has to wonder whether the PP and PSOE realize how lucky they are to have frikis or 'Bolivarian' populists to deal with and not the anti-immigrant, if not blatantly neonazi, parties of France, Italy, or Greece. Homegrown neofascists make the news with increasing frequency in Spain and, of course, Spaniards are genetically no less tribal and xenophobic than their neighbors. But, for most Spaniards, these instincts are undoubtedly tempered by a long history of being economic immigrants, themselves, as well as being under the boot of a fascist dictatorship until the mid-70's. Whatever the explanation, Spain's own brand of leftist populism has given large segments of the population a non-market-driven, pro-worker political alternative to vote for. And it has exposed the bankruptcy of new ideas of the center-left in ways that would not have occurred without them.
A few days ago I happened cross paths with a hastily called protest march in the northern port town of Gijon, Spain, where I live. It had been organized by the workers of a shipyard where a young worker had died a few days earlier while performing a job under questionable safety conditions. A Podemos banner was one of the many among the marchers, who counted upwards of 2000 or so.
Protest marches are not unusual Spain. People take to streets in numbers large and small when they feel that they are not being listened to, and often in the tens of thousands. The unusual thing, at least for an American, is that they are overwhelmingly normal people, not the just fringe left or right - blue collar workers, teachers, well-coiffed grandmothers banging their kitchen pots, the lady that sells you your fish in the supermarket. It is always heartening to see. Just when you think the country is hopelessly in the hands of a corrupt, mediocre, and self-perpetuating political-corporate elite, with its citizenry meekly under the soporific effects of consumerism or the heel of poverty and social exclusion, that citizenry rises up and demands change. Google it today and you will find that there have been grassroots protests in nearly every corner of Spain over the last year. In a world were the odds look so stacked in favor of the moneyed and political "caste" system, as Pablo Iglesias would call it, it may hearten you, too.
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