![]() Iglesias also successfully pushed the Socialists further left, but his conscious legitimising of populism in general probably helped Vox become Spain’s first successful far-right party since the dictatorship of Franco. Ever since, both must often seek coalition partners wherever they try to govern. Podemos was the first insurgent party to break up the longstanding and corrupt Socialist-PP duopoly. Iglesias, nevertheless, has changed Spanish politics profoundly. A bruising campaign was not made easier by the fact that he received an envelope containing two military rifle cartridges and a death threat. ![]() ![]() This was probably his only option, but it cost him his career. Throughout this difficult election Iglesias found himself pushed into a corner and came snarling back. Iglesias’ departure not only makes Irene Montero – his partner and the minister for equality in the government – the family’s senior politician, it also may bring the movement’s “alpha male” syndrome to an end. There was much swooning about Iglesias and Errejón when Podemos was founded in 2014, but also complaints that women were blocked from progressing. All seem better at fulfilling the original Podemos mission of knitting together disparate leftwing movements. Much the same has happened in Valencia, where the local progressive party Compromís – led by Mónica Oltra – is the socialist regional government’s coalition partner. Tellingly, the party is led by a woman, Mónica García, a hospital doctor.īarcelona, meanwhile, has activist Ada Colau as its mayoress. Leadership of Podemos will probably go to the labour minister, Yolanda Díaz, the most effective and popular of its government ministers.Ī party called Más Madrid (More Madrid) set up by Iglesias’ former ally and Podemos co-founder, Íñigo Errejón, overtook the region’s Socialists on Tuesday to come second after the PP. The more realistic message that Madrid’s ghastly Covid record (a city with one of the worst death rates in Europe) was largely Ayuso’s fault did not hit home.īy leaving the political stage, Iglesias will also allow Spain’s far left to complete a female turn. Iglesias responded with similar bombast, proclaiming that the contest was between “democracy or fascism”. ![]() Her provocative, heavyhanded campaign slogan was “freedom or communism”. Ayuso also claimed that her policy of allowing bars to remain open during much of the pandemic had made Madrid the freest and happiest place in Spain. Her campaign presented Podemos, now partnered with Spain’s communists, as Unidas Podemos, a bogeyman that radicalised central government. Podemos began by selling alegr ía – joy – yet in Tuesday’s election, the person selling joy was the PP candidate, Ayuso. To many voters, however, he had gone from being a messenger of change and hope to an increasingly angry, cornered radical. It is unimaginable, though, that Iglesias will leave politics completely, since it has consumed his life since he was a young communist in the working-class Madrid district of Vallecas. As a result, I was less surprised than others when he swapped an apparently powerful position in government for the redblooded, if minority, sport of campaigning in a Madrid region of just 5 million voters. When I was his guest in February, Iglesias was clearly frustrated by being deputy prime minister in the Socialist-led government of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, where Podemos has struggled to impose itself. In fact, the Podemos project itself emerged from a self-made television debate show led by Iglesias, and even as deputy prime minister he continued to interview writers and historians for the party’s website. It has long been a joke among his opponents that Iglesias is obsessed by TV series (Podemos intellectuals even wrote a book analysing the politics of Game of Thrones) but he would not be first leftwinger to believe that their message is best spread through culture. “Films don’t even come close to this,” he said, referencing Steve McQueen’s Small Axe. In a recent conversation, Iglesias told me that he was inspired by the role that streamed drama series on Netflix and other platforms are playing in promoting progressive values. He was careful to say that he was resigning from “party” and “institutional” politics, leaving the door open to other forms of activism. Iglesias ended his farewell speech with a line from a song by Cuban poet Silvio Rodríguez: “I don’t know what destiny will bring, but I have walked my path.” The charismatic former university lecturer’s destiny is indeed hard to predict. In fact, Iglesias boosted Podemos’s vote compared to the 2019 Madrid election, but he failed utterly to stop Spain’s latest political phenomenon – the rightwing Popular party (PP) president of the Madrid region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso – from storming to an unassailable victory.
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