Pedro Sanchez, the incumbent Socialist prime minister, is putting on a brave face and proclaiming victory. “We’ve won the election and we’re going to work for a progressive government,” he told party supporters in Madrid as results arrived on Sunday night. But his position has been corroded in a country that looks even more polarised and politically-paralysed than before. So what are the wider lessons of this latest election debacle?

1. Election gambles are high-risk in volatile political climates

Theresa May might have warned Sanchez to be wary of rolling the dice to break political deadlock after her election debacle in 2017. However, like Boris Johnson in this country, Sanchez felt he had little choice but to chance his luck at the polls. He remains the most likely candidate for prime minister. But he has failed to resolve the crisis of government in the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy after a ballot that left several losers but one big winner —  Vox, the far-right force that has more than doubled its seats in parliament to become the nation’s third-biggest party.

If you play with fire, you are liable to get burned — especially when raising the ghost of Franco by exhuming his remains and the spectre of separatism stalks a land still badly scarred by the financial crash a decade ago.

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2. Traditional two-party politics is breaking down

The Socialists topped the poll for the second time this year — but fell short of winning a workable majority. Sanchez’s party slid back three seats, leaving it 56 short of a majority in parliament, while the conservative Popular Party closed the gap after gaining 22 seats on their historic low in April. Nonetheless it still has less than half the number needed to rule on its own.

These dismal results show how traditional parties of Left and Right, which dominated Spanish politics for four decades after the restoration of democracy in the mid-seventies, are floundering as new parties rise around them. The two parties which used to routinely scoop up eight in 10 votes at elections collected less than half the total vote on Sunday. Three parties were fighting for votes on the Right and three more on the Left.

Spain is far from unique. Political duopolies are being ripped apart across Europe as traditional parties struggle to retain power. We saw this in Britain two years ago when May threw away the Tory majority, leaving her forced to bribe the Democratic Unionist Party to stay in Downing Street, and then a few months later in Germany, when the main parties suffered their worst results for almost seven decades. These historic coalitions are struggling as nationalism rises on the right, identity politics consumes much of the Left and technology exerts its disruptive power. Austerity and environmental issues are also reshaping political landscapes. In Germany, political fragmentation means 13 different coalitions govern its 16 federal states.

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3. Polarised political systems can be left paralysed

Spain’s election has simply fuelled uncertainty. Parties on the Left won 158 seats, while the Right took a combined 150 seats, leaving both significantly short of a majority. Sanchez looks the most likely prime minister but creating a functioning coalition appears harder than before. “Forming a government looked complicated in April – now it is an inscrutable hieroglyph,” was the El Pais verdict.

It may take months to sort a coalition deal, yet this is becoming commonplace in European democracies. Belgium famously went 541 days without a government after an election in June 2010. More recently, Holland and Sweden have endured months of stasis after inconclusive elections. Two elections in Israel this year failed to deliver stability. Meanwhile Britain’s election is intended to break a Brexit logjam that has stymied parliament, reflecting the divisions in the country inflamed by the 2016 referendum — although some fear it could prove as inconclusive the Spanish contest.

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4. Populism remains a powerful force

There were some hopeful suggestions recently Europe had reached peak populism after liberal lawyer Zuzana Caputova became Slovakia’s first female president, the Austrian far-right crashed after being snared in a corruption scandal, and the ultra-nationalist League in Italy, led by selfie-loving Matteo Salvini, was thrown out of government. But in recent weeks we have seen the anti-immigrant Alternative fur Deutschland chalk up some of its best results in German state elections and now this astonishing surge by Vox in Spain.

Many analysts used to argue Spain was the “European exception” —  immune to such populism since nationalist dictatorship was such a recent and painful memory in the country. But Santiago Abascal has managed to establish Vox as a significant force in Spain after winning more than 15% of the vote, ensuring a party only six years old that entered parliament for the first time in April now breathes down the neck of the PP.

Vox exploited the tensions over Catalonia with calls for a tough response, appealing to young male voters, while polling showed a rise in support when Franco’s remains were finally exhumed last month. Vox is an ultra-conservative force, defending bull-fighting while attacking political correctness, but like other populist parties, it ramps up hostility to migration as seen in its calls for a wall around Spanish enclaves in north Africa. “We have managed to open up all the prohibited debates,” said Abascal.

And just like far-right counterparts across the continent, its rise is dragging other parties on the Right away from the centre as it presents existential challenges for traditional conservatives. “Vox’s rise creates a serious dilemma for PP: facilitate a Socialist-led government, which would leave the centre-right party vulnerable to Vox‘s attacks, or going to another election with Vox on the rise,” tweeted analyst Antonio Barroso.

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5. But populists suffer when confronted by political reality

There were two big losers in Sunday’s election. Ironically, they were the two parties that sparked the country’s political crisis with their rise in 2015, which reshaped Spanish politics by challenging the long hegemony of traditional parties. But now the hard-left Podemos, much admired by Jeremy Corbyn, has fewer than half of the 71 seats it held at the start of the year while its centre-right rival, Ciudadanos, has collapsed from 57 to 10 seats, forcing its leader to quit.

They show the difficulties of sustaining a democratic insurgency, especially when based on politics of resentment. The fall of Podemos is especially fascinating, demonstrating what happens when ideological purity confronts pragmatism of everyday politics. This party emerged five-years ago from huge anti-austerity protests in a nation badly wounded by the financial meltdown and bursting of a housing bubble, which still suffers very high youth unemployment. Pablo Iglesias, its charismatic pony-tailed leader, promised to transform politics and came close to stealing the crown of Spain’s left from Sanchez. Then came infighting, fragmentation and bitter rows over compromises in local government. Now it looks significantly diminished.

Pro-business Ciudadanos could not be more different ideologically, but it also hoped to exploit the country’s discredited old politics. Instead it has been humiliated after crumbling from third place to sixth. This group began as a regional party in Catalonia, founded by anti-independence activists, then sought to capitalise on huge corruption staining the PP. Ciudadanos rose rapidly, winning one in seven voters in 2015 but has now shrunk back to be smaller than the Catalan Republican Left in parliament after a disastrous few months. First it refused to negotiate with Sanchez over a governing agreement, then foolishly tried to compete with Vox by tacking hard Right, triggering a spate of resignations from senior officials. Its leader, Albert Rivera, who once posed naked in a campaign poster, has resigned.

New politics does not take long to look like old politics.

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6. Democracy is left looking dysfunctional

In June 2015 — after the first of this recent quartet of elections — exit polls predicted Podemos had broken the mould and beaten the Socialists. Then the results came in and crushed their hopes. After this latest verdict of Spanish voters, Iglesias insisted that “the only way to stop the far-right in Spain is to have a stable government”.

He is right. Yet this concept of strong and stable government (to coin a familiar phrase) looks further off then ever in Spain after a result that leaves democracy looking dysfunctional again as it struggles to adapt to a fast-changing world. Studies have shown dwindling support in Western nations for the world’s most successful form of government as populists in various hues exploit electoral and economic dissatisfaction. Spain is just one more nation on our polarised continent struggling to find a path through these tempestuous political storms.

Tensions were running high last week. Insults shot back and forth during the final TV debates. “Are you done lying yet?” one of the politicians said impatiently, “Then it’s my turn now.” Cue much delight on Twitter.

One of the key causes of current disruption, though, was glaringly absent from the highly-staged, high-stakes debates. Vox, a radical Right-wing group founded a mere six years ago, was not eligible to participate because it didn’t have any elected representatives in Madrid. Not any longer. Vox has since claimed 24 seats in Spain’s parliament – the first far-right grouping to win any seats since the death of Franco, in 1975.

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For many in Spain, the growing appeal of these populists is alarming. It certainly is for the conservative Popular Party (PP), which was humiliated in the ballot as its number of seats more than halved from 137 in 2016’s vote to 66. It’s a threat too, to the other main party on the Right, Ciudadanos, which entered the Spanish parliament in 2015 with around 14% of the vote. Though it remained steady at 16% yesterday.

But those most alarmed are on the Left, particularly the centre-Left Socialist Party (the PSOE), whose leader, Pedro Sánchez, has been Prime Minister since last summer, and Podemos, the young party to the Left of the Socialists. For them, Vox represents social and political regression in its purest form and will doubtless give them a turbulent time as they try to form a coalition from a fragmented system.

Vox was founded in late 2013 by Santiago Abascal, a former official of the Popular Party and Vox’s current leader. He left the PP because he felt it was abandoning its conservative values and getting too soft on Catalan and Basque secessionism. He now refers to his former party as “the tiny, cowardly Right”.

It didn’t break through until December of last year at which point it won more than 10% of the vote in the regional elections in Andalusia — a region especially affected by unemployment, immigration, and economic stagnation – helping to oust the Left, which had governed since 1982. Its appeal has subsequently been spreading across the country, with Abascal’s rallies drawing large crowds.

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Socially extremely conservative, Vox has been carefully tapping in to voter anxieties which are fuelled by culture wars and an acute sense of loss: the loss of a former way of life, of national sovereignty, of their privilege as well as the loss of jobs. Immigration is partly blamed for this. With some 50,000 people crossing the Mediterranean in 2018, Spain has now replaced Italy as the main hub for migrants from Africa. But the Catalan and Basque attempts at secessionism are also seen as agents of unwanted change and a betrayal of Spain.

Vox offers an affirmation of traditional, unapologetic, masculine Spanishness. “The Left will never succeed in making us feel ashamed for that which only merits pride,” said Abascal at a rally last autumn. This is Spanish politics, cowboy-style: Vox’s campaign video shows its leader crossing a plane as a lone ranger on horseback.

Abascal proudly invokes Spain’s unity and Catholicism while calling for drastic measures against immigrants, particularly of a Muslim background. He defends family values and stands up for men against the oppression of “feminazis”. He champions hunters and bullfighting, opposes gay marriage (which has been legal since 2005), and wants to outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape.

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While the Left accepts the fact that the Spanish state contains various nations, including Catalonia, Galicia, and the Basque Country — a political reality enshrined in Spain’s constitution — Vox calls for a return to centralism. Along with Ciudadanos and the PP, Vox is radically opposed to Catalan claims to self-determination. In fact, it proposes to make pro-independence parties illegal.

It’s partly in reaction to the Catalan bid for independence that Vox has managed to revive patriotism so powerfully. In post-Franco Spain, flag-waving jingoism was long considered in bad taste outside of any context that did not involve the national football squad. But Vox has embraced a full-throated Spanish nationalism, promoting the flag waving and everything else it entails.

It celebrates myths and heroes that could have been lifted directly from Francoist textbooks: the conquest of the Americas, the Catholic “reconquest” of Spain in the 1492 after centuries of Muslim “domination” and El Cid. There are other echoes from more recent history, too. Several prominent Vox candidates have been shown to have an extreme-right past. The party’s number two for Barcelona, for example, is a former candidate for Fuerza Nueva, a violent neofascist group.

The Catalan crisis is definitely a factor in Vox’s rise in a country that was long considered immune to the anti-immigrant, right-wing populism that has emerged in many other countries. But more important is the feeling that the progressive urban political elites have neglected their needs and disparaged their traditions and culture. This disconnect is something we are seeing throughout Europe. And  is felt particularly strongly in rural populations. But the Vox message has also found purchase in wealthier, culturally conservative voters; this could be down to the fact that the party twins its conservative nationalist message with more liberal economic proposals (it seeks, for example, to reduce corporate tax rates, and abolish inheritance tax and estate tax altogether).

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Vox’s successful rise, and its leaching of voters from the other two parties on the right, unleashed a savage competition between Ciudadanos and the PP – pushing both to the Right. It was a battle, though, that the PP lost.

It falls, then, to the Socialists and Mr Sánchez – who won, but without a majority – to attempt to form a centre-Left coalition with Podemos, possibly with the support of the Catalan and Basque parties. This option, though, isn’t particularly favoured by the financial sector, which is nervous about Podemos’s proposals, which include raising the minimum wage, investing in health care and education, instituting a financial transaction tax, and cracking down on corporate tax evasion. And the separatists are seen as toxic by the centre Right, which will make it difficult for Sánchez to appeal to them for support.

Spain needs a stable government to tackle its many challenges: the economy has been growing at a bit over 2% but unemployment rates in some regions remains over 20%. The educational, judicial, and pension systems need overhauling, and it is desperate for a negotiated solution to the constitutional conundrum of its territorial make-up, which has paralysed the country for several years now.

It’s unlikely any coalition will bring stability; Spain isn’t used to them. And to make things worse, the entire country is going back to the polls on May 26 for regional, municipal, and European elections. This will make it harder for parties to commit to the concessions that coalitions require. Expect further division and disruption, now that the people have spoken.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has been under pressure to call an election ever since he ousted Popular Party (PP) leader Mariano Rajoy last summer. His governing Socialist Party (PSOE) holds just 84 seats (24%) in the 350-seat Congress, and its budget has just been voted down.

Getting its budget passed was always likely to present a colossal challenge for the Sanchez government, and so it has proven: on February 13 the government lost the vote by 191 to 158 after the country’s separatist lawmakers allied with the PP to vote down the fiscal proposals. It was this that triggered the call for a snap election, slated for 28 April.

Spain was due to hold a general election next year anyway, but it was always more likely than not that the PSOE would be forced to go to the polls before then. The party ousted the scandal-hit Rajoy government in a parliamentary vote of no confidence that won the backing of 180 MPs back in 2018. The vote followed a ruling by Spain’s highest criminal court that the PP had profited from illegal kickbacks from government contracts. Yet the anti-Rajoy alliance – which Sanchez himself described at one point as the “Frankenstein coalition” – crumbled soon after the PP had been deposed.

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Divisions have gradually come to a head as it has become clear that Sanchez would not soften his position against holding a Catalan independence referendum. This led separatist parties – including the Catalan Republican Left – to vote down Sanchez’s budget proposals. In doing so, they may well end up with a Right-wing government in Madrid that is even more hostile to their independence aspirations than the PSOE.

In fact, since he ousted Rajoy last year, Sanchez has improved the PSOE’s standing in the polls. A few short years ago commentators were preparing to write the obituary of yet another European social democratic party. In the 2011 election, the PSOE received the lowest vote share in its history, and less than 12 months ago, El Pais was reporting that, were a “hypothetical election” to be held, “both parties would receive their worst result in history”.

In a country that had grown tired of the financial scandals surrounding the governing PP, Sanchez’s ruthless action in toppling Rajoy proved popular. As such, the PSOE currently sit at around 24% in the polls – granted a modest improvement on the 22% it was polling at prior to Rajoy’s departure, but nonetheless the largest share for any single party.

Yet this is still less than the combined total of the two centre-Right parties, the PP and Ciudadanos (Citizens), who together are currently polling at around 40%.

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Sanchez will have to hope that voters reward his government’s fiscal generosity after a decade of austerity. Earlier this year the government raised the minimum wage by 22%. It has also announced a plan to raise pensions, increase paternity leave and invest more heavily in education and social security.

A glimmer of hope for Sanchez may lie in the steady demise of the anti-establishment radical insurgent party, Podemos. The party is currently embroiled in what looks to be the early stages of a split between its leader, Pablo Iglesias, and its co-founder, Íñigo Errejón, over party lists for this year’s regional election in Madrid.

Support for Podemos has almost halved in the polls from a high of 27% in December 2014 to 15% today, putting them in fourth place, and only four points ahead of Vox, a party of the hard Right. The steady decline of Podemos – in part the victim of that familiar curse of Left-wing political parties, the factional squabble – offers Sanchez breathing space on his Left.

Yet his relationship with the separatist parties is more complex. Sanchez’s relative popularity in Spain as a whole rests partly – as it does for the leaders of all the major parties barring Podemos – on his refusal to meaningfully compromise with Catalan separatists. Had Sanchez been willing to offer separatists a referendum prior to his budget the separatists would almost certainly have supported it. Yet in offering a referendum, Sanchez would invariably have lost support in the rest of Spain. Such is the dilemma for Spain’s Prime Minister.

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What may work in Sanchez’s favour is the fear among many – not just on the Spanish Left – of the Right returning to power after less that a year in opposition. This is particularly true for separatist parties, towards whom Sanchez has behaved more tolerantly than his PP predecessors.

The trials of separatist leaders for their role in the botched 2017 Catalan independence referendum are going ahead as planned, but the atmosphere in Spain is markedly less febrile than it was during the PP’s time in office. Indeed, Sanchez has faced widespread protests in Madrid and other cities for his government’s attempt to open up a dialogue with separatists. He had also promised in his party’s budget (which the separatist parties vetoed) to channel 18.5% of total state spending into Catalonia, an increase on the previous 13.1%.

Yet it would be extremely foolish on the part of Pedro Sanchez to bank on separatists being willing to form a governing coalition with the PSOE. The more militant among the separatists may actually be hoping for a government that is more implacably hostile to independence, with the aim of fostering a greater degree of militancy among pro-independence voters in regions such as Catalonia. The heavy-handed action against separatists in Catalonia by the Rajoy government saw support for independence climb to nearly 50% at one point in 2017.

The smart money would be on Sanchez’s party topping the polls. But unless the situation changes drastically in the next two months, the eventual outcome may well be a coalition government of the Right.

Only a fool would write off ‘Mr Handsome’ – as Pedro Sánchez is nicknamed. Like Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, Sanchez has been written-off many times in the past by establishment politicians and commentators only to re-emerge ahead of the pack. After almost a decade of austerity, fatigued voters may yet throw a spoke in the wheel of Spanish politics and return the Prime Minister who promised more money.

1. Germany

Germany’s state elections will be a test of the strength of blue-collar populists on the one hand, and the centrist anti-populist reaction on the other. State elections held last year showed that the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) has support even in parts of Western Germany. AfD entered the regional parliaments in Bavaria and Hesse, taking votes from both the centre-Right CDU/CSU and the centre-left SPD. But other voters abandoned the mainstream parties for the opposite reason – they thought the grand coalition too restrictive of migration, with the Greens being the greatest beneficiary.

Bremen’s election this year, scheduled on May 26, the day of the EU elections, will test the SPD’s resilience – the party has received the most votes there in every state election since 1946. No polls have been taken since the recent Green spurt, but in August the SPD were level with the CSU and only 6% ahead of the Greens. If the national poll trends since then – which show the SPD falling and the Greens rising – are occurring in Bremen too, the SPD is currently running behind the CDU in Bremen and running neck and neck with the Greens.

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Such a result would be a disaster for the SPD and would likely pile the pressure on them to abandon their grand coalition with Chancellor Merkel’s CDU/CSU. Should that occur, it is unlikely that Merkel or CDU party president, and presumed heir apparent, Annegret Kramp-Krannenbauer, could form a government since the only alternative to a grand coalition is a CDU/CSU-Green-FDP coalition. A governmental collapse would then send Germans to the polls in a snap federal election.

The other state elections occur in three former East German states, and the key question there is whether the AfD will take first place in any – or even all – contests. The most recent polls in Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia all show the AfD in second place, but only a few points behind the front runner. Moreover, each state’s poll shows the combined vote share for the AfD and the descendants of the former East German Communist party, Die Linke (“The Left”), at between 39% and 44%.

That would make for extremely fraught coalition talks, as the only possible outcome that excludes both parties involves four party administrations involving the CDU, SPD, the liberal FDP and the Greens. In Thuringia and Saxony, polls indicate that the only alternative to such a rainbow coalition would require the CDU to partner with the AfD or Die Linke, neither of which the party has ever been willing to do.

2. Spain

In conjunction with the EU vote on May 26^th, 13 of Spain’s regions will go to the polls. All three types of populists have parties contesting these elections, and two of them look to be rising. The Right-wing populist party, Vox, is poised to enter most regions’ parliaments. The centrist populist Ciudadanos are also poised for significant gains, giving them near equal status with Spain’s two traditional parties in many regions. But the Leftist populist Podemos, or Unidos Podemos in some regions where they have combined with the former United Left, are likely to slip in most states.

All three trends are apparent in the Madrid region. Vox’s staunch opposition to Catalonian separatism and migration has seen it skyrocket in the polls, where it currently receives 12-18%. Much of this support, seemingly, comes from the traditional party of the centre-Right, Partido Popular (PP). But support also seems to be coming from former Podemos voters too. Podemos and the United Left had received over 23% in 2015, but the new grouping Unidos Podemos was polling at only 18% in early January. Just as is the case with support for similar parties around the world, like the Sweden Democrats and Germany’s AfD, Vox’s support thus seems to come from both the Left and Right.

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Spain’s government is likely to become even less stable over the coming years. The current parliament is roughly split between a Left-populist bloc and a Right-centre bloc, with Vox currently unrepresented. The balance of power is held by a grab bag of regional parties and Catalonian separatists. If the government were to fall this year, unable to paper over the differences between these groups, Vox seem likely to gain enough seats to hold the balance of power.

This would present Spain with the same dilemma as other Europeans countries: either they create a grand coalition that weakens over time or they invite the populists into government in a centre-Right led coalition. Either course is likely to increase political instability in the EU’s fourth largest economy.

3. Estonia

Estonia’s election on March 1 is likely to see a new, Eurosceptic and ethno-nationalist party hold the balance of power. The Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) has recently been polling around 20%, making it the third largest party in the country. With the market-liberal Reform Party and the centre-Left, Centre Party running roughly even, the EKRE could decide which party takes the Prime Minister’s chair.

EKRE emphasises Estonian nationality above all else – arguing that Estonia has become a “vassal state” of the EU. It strongly opposes immigration and Russian involvement in the Ukraine and Georgia, and challenges the market forces it says have made Estonia a home of cheap labour for foreign capital. Inclusion of the EKRE in government would undoubtedly sound alarm bells among the European establishment, but their participation may be unavoidable if there is to be stable government.

4. Denmark

The Danish election, which must be held on or before 17 June, seems likely to further demonstrate populism’s impact. The Danish People’s Party (DF) is one of Europe’s more successful blue-collar populist parties and has been a mainstay of the current centre-Right governing coalition. Even the Social Democrats have backed some of the government’s anti-immigration proposals (at the expense of their link with longtime partners the Social Liberals). While the Social Democrats look set to finish in first place, Denmark’s fragmented party system requires at least three parties to coalesce to form a government. The Social Democrats’ shift on migration issues opens up the possibility of a European first: a centre-left-led government that includes a blue-collar populist party.

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DF has been so successful that it has now spawned a competitor, the New Right (Nye Boergerlige in Danish). Formed by former members of the Conservative People’s Party, the New Right argues that DF is too supportive of migrants. It is also well to DF’s right on economic matters, with its leader supporting the total elimination of corporate taxation. Polls show it is consistently above the 2% threshold for parliamentary representation.

5. Canada

Canada’s general election, scheduled for October 19^th, will be another test of populism’s appeal. Despite having one of the largest shares of immigrants in the Western world, Canada – thanks in part to a skills-based immigration policy – has largely avoided anti-migrant populism. But that will be put to the test by former Conservative MP Maxime Bernier’s new People’s Party of Canada.

Bernier left the Conservatives after narrowly losing his bid to become their leader. His new party will campaign on pro-market economics and lower levels of overall immigration. It is currently polling below 2% in the polls, and, like the UK, Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system prevents small parties from winning many, if any, seats. Its influence could nevertheless force the Conservatives to the Right in order to increase their chance of beating Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party. Even raising the issue threatens to break Canada’s pro-immigration consensus.

Bernier’s home province of Quebec is particularly interesting. Quebec is the only province allowed to admit its own economic immigrants, and the province’s desire to maintain its predominantly Francophone status has meant it is increasingly admitting migrants from North Africa. Quebec is also where anti-Muslim feelings are strongest, and a centre-Right party pledging to reduce immigration by 20% won a majority of seats in last year’s provincial election.

Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer recently said he wants to work with the Quebec government to give it more authority over non-economic migration in the province, a position widely believed to be crafted to court the Quebec centre-Right vote.

Much can happen in a year, but it’s hard to see the elites’ dream of a return to normalcy becoming a reality. Too many voters are dreaming of something quite different to the status quo, and the populist parties look most likely to deliver it for them.

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But this only provides so much distraction from a more troubling story: that of the economy. Improved overall growth figures cannot conceal the ongoing rise in precarious and poorly paid work which increasingly characterises the Spanish economy.

Rents in Spain have been rising 12 times faster than salaries; the typical salary of young workers entering the labour market is 33% lower today than it was in 2008; and about 90% of new employment contracts signed in 2015 were for temporary positions. Unemployment peaked at 27% in 2013 and has since fallen, but it remains twice that of the Eurozone average. And the country also holds the unenviable distinction of having the third highest rate of child poverty in the EU (after Romania and Greece).

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But these broad-brush statistics don’t tell the full story. Others have done pretty well out of Spain’s descent into recession a decade ago: the wealthiest 1% saw its share of national wealth increase from 17% in 2011 to 20% in 2014, according to the Bank of Spain. Indeed, it is the poorest 25% who have suffered the biggest loss of wealth since 2011, with the bottom quarter in debt by an average of €1,300.

It’s a disparity that can be seen starkly in the contrast between the undeveloped south, areas such as Andalusia and Murcia, and cities such as Madrid and Barcelona. The average salary in the Madrid suburb of Pozuelo de Alarcón is €73,000, while in Torrevieja, a province of Alicante, it is just €13,000. A summer holiday resort that attracts its fair share of British pensioners in search of sea, sun and sangria, Torrevieja experiences challenges similar to towns like Blackpool, with many of the local jobs vanishing during the winter months. The nearby city of Elda, another tourist destination, was listed as having the highest number of residents out of work in the whole of Spain in 2015, with an astonishing 40% of residents without a job.

The south east, you could call it flyover Spain, was particularly badly hit by the decline of construction. And white elephants – all those abandoned building projects – dot the landscape after toxic debt burst the building bubble and brought down the country’s banks.[1. The most notorious example is the empty Cuidad Real airport, which sits 235km south of Madrid. Built in 2008, the airport went bankrupt in 2012, and sits abandoned to nature and the elements. It is a ghostly testament to the irresponsible and over-priced projects which helped to cripple Spain’s construction sector.]

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Nor is it only rural areas that are still suffering. Despite being nominally Spain’s third city, Valencia is very much treated as flyover country by Spanish elites. New home stock in the city has fallen by 35% since 2009. With the disappearance of new building projects, large numbers of jobs – and with them incomes – have disappeared too. In 2014 it was estimated that a quarter of all Valencia’s inhabitants were living in poverty. And once you are on the way to the bottom it often takes very little to sink a few more rungs. A street count carried out in Valencia in 2016 by the homelessness charity Bokatas found that over 400 people were sleeping rough in the city – far more than the official estimate of 79 people made the previous year.

The rise of outsider parties in Spain was undoubtedly rooted in the inability of mainstream parties to deal effectively with this fallout, generated by the financial crash, and the growing inequality in the country. But equally, the Left has spectacularly failed to take the lead on dealing with the corruption scandal currently engulfing the Rajoy government – El País has called it “the largest corruption scandal in Spain’s democratic history” – nevermind the wider economic malaise.

As a result, Pedro Sanchez’s opposition Socialist Party (PSOE) continues to underperform in the polls – though Sanchez may yet win power through a vote of no confidence to oust Rajoy. And much of the ruling Popular Party’s (PP) disillusioned support is peeling off to the new centre-right party Ciudadanos. Indeed, a Metroscopia poll taken earlier this year found that Ciudadanos, led by the 38-year-old lawyer Albert Rivera, would receive the most votes were an election to be held today, with the party on course to secure 27% of the vote. This would be a hugely significant result for a party that was only founded in 2005.

Ciudadanos has benefited significantly from its staunch opposition to Catalonian independence and its tough talk on corruption. In Catalonia, where the party first emerged, it has taken a harder stance on immigration, and proposed burqa and niqab bans in public spaces. But it is also attracting middle class voters with a Macron-esque promise of cosmetic rather than radical change.

Perhaps emphasising the extent to which populism in Spain is increasingly dominated by the centre-right is the plight of Podemos. The insurgent left-wing party finished third with 20% of the vote at the 2015 election. It has since slipped back into fourth place and can now rely on the support of around 17% of the electorate. As I predicted for UnHerd last year, the party’s decision in 2016 to forge an electoral pact with the old Spanish Communist Party (PCE) has put a ceiling on the number of voters it could attract from the centre.

What is more, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias has been accused of hypocrisy after it was revealed that he and his partner, the party’s parliamentary spokeswoman Irene Montero, purchased an exclusive property worth over half a million Euros situated on the outskirts of Madrid. So much for Iglesias’ – and by extension Podemos’ – wider reputation as modest, self-abnegating idealists, especially at a time when so many in Spain are struggling.

The struggle of Spain’s hard-up classes will sound familiar to many voters across Europe. But so too the inability of the Spanish Left to capitalise on the discrediting of elites – and more broadly to figure out what its purpose is in the twenty-first century.

More on populism in Spain...

Mainland Europe's most important radical party doesn't just seek seats - but 'hegemonia' too

By James Bloodworth

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When nationalist movements clash it can – for the left – resemble two fleas arguing over who owns the dog they live on. Flags, cultural miscellanea and the mythical ‘national soul’ are typically viewed with suspicion. They are a frivolous distraction from the real struggle, which for the left takes place between economic classes in what Marx called the “abode of production”. Political life is thus dominated by an economic rather than a territorial logic. Beneath the jingoism that characterises nationalist movements, it is a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss – albeit with his own flag and football team. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

I arrived in Barcelona from Madrid in early September – just in time, as it happened, for the national day of Catalonia, which on the eleventh of every year commemorates the fall of the city during the War of Spanish Succession. This year, however, the day was marked by a demonstration of national will toward a specific end: the semi-autonomous region in north eastern Spain was gearing up for its unauthorised independence referendum on 1 October. If the region voted Yes, Catalonia’s President Carles Puigdemont was threatening to make a unilateral declaration of independence in the face of threats bellowed from Madrid.

For Podemos, the idea of Catalonian independence throws up its own challenge. The party has a significant body of support in both Catalonia and the Basque regions, including among secessionists. Any separation on the part of Catalonia would effectively see swathes of Podemos’ voter base marooned in a foreign territory.

But principle is also at stake. Full independence is anathema to many leftists within Podemos, who gravitate instinctively toward fraternal internationalism over petty nationalism. That said, the party does support the right of Catalans to hold a legal referendum – leading the bigger parties to portray Podemos as intent on ‘breaking up’ Spain.

It hadn’t been nationalist flags that I’d first noticed on arriving in Barcelona, but graffiti. About 100 metres down the street from my hotel in the Dreta de l’Eixample neighbourhood, the words ‘kill the tourist’ had been emblazoned on a doorway in blood-red paint. Barcelona is at the epicentre of a wave of anti-tourist sentiment that has recently hit other cities including San Sebastian and Valencia. A recent survey carried out by Barcelona city council found that the locals consider tourism to be the city’s second most serious problem after unemployment.

Wrestling your way through the hordes of inebriated stag parties on Las Ramblas of an evening, you do sometimes feel the urge to pull out your own can of paint and dab something colourfully offensive on the sidewalk. There is something almost profane about sated English revellers vomiting on cobbles a few blocks away from the modest Placa de George Orwell. But then I have been there and done that too, so to speak; and it was after all the anti-temperance Orwell who wrote approvingly in 1941 that the English have a tendency to “drink as much beer as their wages will permit”. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Nowadays Catalonia plays host to some 18 million tourists every year, and at least some of the local anger derives from the material inequalities generated by this influx of extranjeros. Buy-to-Let landlords are purchasing entire blocks of flats to lease via apps like Airbnb, and there is a sense it is driving up rents in the most desirable areas of the city. El Periodico reported in 2016 that apartment rents in the central part of town had increased by more than 10% between 2014 and 2016.

Yet there is a degree of nationalist sentiment at work in the animosity directed at the tourists: a recent attack on a tourist bus near the Camp Nou football stadium was claimed by Arran Jovent, a group linked to Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), a left-wing pro-Catalan independence party. An Arran spokesperson told the BBC that it wanted to “destroy the system – and the tourist industry is part of that system”.

When I arrived in Barcelona a similar – if more subtle – attitude prevailed in even the quieter quarters of the city. Draped from the apartment blocks in the old town a patchwork of Catalan flags and banners loudly proclaimed ‘Si!’ and ‘Democracia!’. As in Britain, the economic grievances emanating from austerity have, in regions like Catalonia, been directed toward the central government – despite the fact that Puigdemont’s autonomous government in Catalonia has introduced its own programme of spending cuts. The referendum is at least partly a ‘Fote’t!’ (f*ck you) to Madrid, as one flag-waving young Catalan put it to me.

But a more miserly logic is also at play. Wealthy Catalonia contains around seven-and-a-half million people and accounts for about a fifth of Spain’s overall GDP. In a manner resembling those in Britain who complain semi-seriously of wishing to turn London into a mercantilist ‘city state’, some in Catalonia view yocal, rural Spain as a parasitical drain on prosperous Barcelona.

On Catalan day itself I picked up a taxi to the edge of town where Pablo Iglesias, the 38-year-old leader of Podemos, was billed to speak at a Catalunya in Comú rally. After several hours hanging around in the oppressive midday sun – the newspapers sold by the communist sects at these events make excellent protective hats once you master the art of folding them – Iglesias finally appeared on the stage.

A diminutive man with a ponytail and a beard who looks the archetypal university professor, Iglesias is nonetheless an impressive rhetorician. His voice was deeper than I was expecting and he spoke in a straightforward, authoritative style that had a hint of Hugo Chavez in its euphonic jabs. It hammered away at the listener like a fist striking a table, rising in intonation as Iglesias reached a point he wished to emphasise. From the small stage, the Podemos leader denounced the PP as a “corrupt political party”, and accused them of deploying the methods of “Francismo” in the days leading up to the referendum. But the message was of solidarity rather than separateness.

“We have to join forces to kick them out of government. We have to build an alternative majority, so finally Catalans can vote,” Iglesias thundered between spontaneous chants of ‘Si, se Podemos’ (Yes we can) from the assembled crowd of around 400 people. Iglesias also attacked the right-leaning government in Catalonia for its social policies.

Back in Madrid I had spent an hour at the Spanish Parliament talking to Ione Belarra, the Podemos MP for the Pamplona region in northern Spain. Elected to the Spanish parliament at the national elections of 2016, Belarra was scathing about Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) and its response to the nationalist provocations of the government in Catalonia.

“The principle problem here is the Popular Party. They have been playing deaf with the independence movement for the past six years, and now they pretend to be surprised by events,” she told me.

While the PP accepts a degree of self-determination for the regions, it has been able to win successive national elections with little support in places like Catalonia and the Basque region. There is thus little incentive for Madrid to make further concessions such as granting Catalans the right to hold a legal referendum.

There are 17 ‘autonomous communities’ in Spain, each with control over policies areas including education, the police and social security. While the arrangement seems to suit most people, nationalists on both sides have been attempting to tear up the existing order. A 2006 statute granted Catalonia further powers of autonomy; yet the move was reversed in 2010 after it was challenged in the courts by the PP. Rajoy argues that the current referendum is illegal under Spain’s 1978 constitution, which reaffirmed ‘the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation’. Yet the PP has rejected all attempts to reform the post-Franco constitution – a prerequisite to Catalonia holding a serious referendum.

A former journalist, the President of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont governs with a slim majority and a minority of the popular vote based on regional elections which took place in 2015. A fervent secessionist, Puigdemont was the first Catalan President to refuse to swear an oath of loyalty to the Spanish constitution and the King. He governs in coalition with several small left-wing nationalist parties.

“What we are defending on this issue is that a referendum has to be held, but it has to be held with guarantees for everyone,” Belarra tells me. “It has to be agreed upon by all parties, and it has to be recognised internationally. Otherwise there is no way of moving forward…Never mind which way they’re going to vote; we have to guarantee that they can do it.”

The Franco regime was opposed to any manifestation of autonomy on the part Spain’s nationalities. According to the Spain scholar Paul Preston, during the final days of the Civil War Franco’s rebel army waged a “deliberately ponderous war of annihilation through the Basque Country, Santander, Asturias, Aragon and Catalonia”- all the better to strike fear into potentially troublesome populations early on. The Franco regime subsequently banned the Catalan language and rescinded all regional powers granted by the fledgling republic. Celebrating Catalan day at all under Franco would invariably draw the unwelcome attention of the authorities.

On the eve of the celebrations I met up with Adriá Porta Caballé, an academic who previously worked for Podemos’ deputy leader and Political Secretary, Íñigo Errejón. Porta Caballé has since moved again to Barcelona to help start a Podemos-linked Catalan-based coalition called Catalunya en Comú (Catalonia in Common). Podemos has had a role in several electoral coalitions such as this, including En Marea in Galicia, En Comú Podem (a Barcelona-based project led by the Mayor Ada Colau), and Compromís in Valencia.

Founded in December 2016, Catalunya en Comú is led by 43-year-old university professor Xavier Domenech and supported by the mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau. The new party backs the Catalans’ right to hold an officially recognised referendum but, faithful to the left, the movement is broadly against independence – only around 20% of its members are secessionists.

“This is not going to be the referendum that the Catalan people need,” the bearded and bespectacled Porta Caballé tells me between drags on a cigarette.

Yet he calls the referendum a “legitimate mobilisation” – a reminder to the Spanish government of the existence of the “80 per cent of the Catalan people that want to have a referendum”.

While a majority of Catalans appear to support the notion of an official referendum, most polls over recent decades have found a majority of Catalans against a parting of ways with Spain. According to a June 2017 poll, 41% of Catalans were in favour of an independent state, compared to 49% who were against. Support for independence peaked at 57% in 2012. Interestingly, an analysis of polling data by the Atlantic found a strong correlation between support for independence and unemployment in Catalonia.

“In Podemos, we refer to the ’78 regime, which is the regime born of the constitution of 1978…which to us is a series of contracts made with the fear that maybe the dictatorship can come again,” Porta Caballé says.

The constitution describes regions like Catalonia as ‘nationalities’; yet it recognises only one nation.

“For us [this] is crucial…so you have something in between true recognition of nations and the centralist state organisation that we had before…It is evident I think to everybody [apart from the PP] that we cannot go back to the 1978 state.”

The extent to which a centralised state is fundamental to Spanish conservatism is apparent from any comparison with Britain. Porta Caballé tells me that he was “amazed” at the equable response of British Conservatives to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence.

“I mean, I know [David] Cameron was economically liberal, but at least I think you in Great Britain have a democratic right-[wing], so you have a right that is able to have [something] like the Scottish referendum without [Cameron] losing all the conservatives. This has never happened here because the right didn’t change I would say as much after dictatorship.”

Podemos has been accused by its opponents of having an ambiguous stance on Catalan independence due to its support for an official referendum. In the weeks leading up to 1 October, both the PP and Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party (PSOE) backed the police measures deployed by Madrid – enacted to prevent the rogue referendum from taking place. The crackdown has included raids on local newspapers, the seizing of millions of ballot papers, and, as the date of the referendum approached, a rescinding of Catalonia’s financial autonomy. 14 of Catalonia’s government officials have been detained by the Spanish authorities, while on the day of the vote itself, footage emerged of the Civil Guard using police batons and rubber bullets to bloody Catalans attempting to vote. Catalan officials reported that 800 people were injured during clashes with police. Under article 155 of the Spanish constitution, Madrid is able to intervene like this in the running of what is supposed to be an autonomous region.

Yet despite the threat of violence, 2.3 million Catalans managed to cast their votes, with a turnout of around 43%. Around 90% of those who marked their ballot papers backed independence.

In the immediate aftermath of 1st October both sides mobilised their supporters. On the day of the vote itself, crowds draped in the Catalan flag thronged the city’s squares and boulevards. A week later, on 8 October, thousands gathered in Barcelona waving the flag of Spain – a raucous reminder that a majority here are not ardent secessionists.

While Porta Caballé is adamant that this is “not going to legally be the referendum that the Catalan people need”, he says the job of Catalunya in Comú – and by extension Podemos – is to “represent the 80% of the Catalan people that want to have a referendum”:

“What you have from the Partido Popular since the start is a legalist approach to what’s happening. So they always say the constitution doesn’t approve of a referendum…They’re not doing the crucial job which is to say that maybe the best way to carry on and be united as a state is to be more permissive and to be more democratic in the recognition of different nationalities. That maybe such a belligerent reaction to any kind of national and autonomous expression is [a] worse [way]…to keep the country united.”

The left finds itself in an unusual position over Catalan independence, much as the British left did when Scotland held its referendum in 2014. For some, nationalist movements resurrect the penumbra of romantic grandeur that has slipped away from the wider socialist movement. During the lead up to the Scottish vote, leftist grandee Tariq Ali enthusiastically contrasted “dreary old England” with “intellectually liberating” Scotland, where nationalism was not really nationalism at all, but rather a social democratic movement whose “gaze is fixed on the Norwegian model”.

Ali, a former Maoist, embodies better than most the temperament of those who latch like wasps to a clod of jam anything which emits even the faintest whiff of ‘revolution’.

Yet Ali was something of an anachronism; a majority of the international left still look with suspicion on any strain of nationalism. The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (the Barcelona-based anarcho-syndicalist trade union) perhaps captured the prevailing mood when it put out a statement in October declaring that, “while we firmly oppose repression from an increasingly authoritarian state and their fascist allies, we are in no way supportive of the nationalist agenda”. Both the Spanish and Catalan Socialist parties are similarly opposed to independence, as are most of those involved in Podemos.

It is perhaps paradoxical, then, that Podemos has been accused of siding with Catalan’s nationalists. The former PP Prime Minister José María Aznar has accused Podemos of attempting to “destroy the transition as an agreement and as a narrative of reconciliation among Spaniards”. Similarly, one of the conditions on which the Socialist Party has up to now rejected an electoral alliance with Podemos is on the basis that the smaller party wishes to “break-up Spain”.

Yet anyone looking for proof that Podemos’ careful positioning on regional independence is genuine – and that the new party does not wish to see Spain torn apart – need only look at results from recent elections. Podemos is one of the leading electoral forces in both Catalonia and the Basque Country; the secession of either region would deliver a significant blow to the party’s electoral prospects. No doubt Podemos’ support for a referendum on Catalan independence is itself responsible for some of the support the party has picked up in the region. But the notion that Podemos is actively seeking the break-up of Spain is conspiratorial nonsense. The party’s approach to self-determination is hardly novel, even on the left, and might be distilled into Lenin’s remark that “the unconditional recognition of the struggle for…self-determination in no way obliges us to support every demand for national self-determination”.

Put another way, one can in principle support the idea of a referendum without coming down definitely on one side.

Podemos’ position on Catalonian independence does in fact reflect that of Catalonia itself. Some 80% of the population are thought to favour a referendum; yet a slim majority appear to want to remain a part of Spain.

As things stand, both Spain and Catalonia wait. In a much-anticipated post-referendum statement on 10 October, Carles Puigdemont effectively kicked the can down the road. He did not, as some expected, make a declaration of independence; but he did say that Catalonia has a “mandate” to become a republic. In response, Mariano Rajoy announced that the central government had taken steps toward suspending home rule in Catalonia.

To outside observers the solution to the crisis seems straightforward enough: a more autonomous Catalonia situated within a properly federal and democratic Spain – provided, of course, that Catalonia votes to remain within Spain in a proper referendum. But few in the government can bring themselves to argue for it. Those who make such arguments – especially from a distance – fail to grasp the degree to which the unity of the Spanish state is a central ideological pillar of Mariano Rajoy’s conservatives. The ‘indivisibility’ of the country was central to Francoism and is far from peripheral to a contemporary Popular Party that has never fully disavowed its Francoist antecedents. Puigdemont’s apparent climbdown is probably based on the shrewd assumption that Madrid will continue to respond bull-headedly to even the more modest proposals emanating from Catalonia – further bolstering support for independence.

‘Our leaders never make mistakes’, bellowed Franco’s thugs in the 1930s, borrowing from the Italian fascist slogan ‘Il Duce sempre ha raggione’. If it wishes to avoid further acrimony and civil strife, Spain’s ruling Popular Party would do well to heed the words of another Italian, and embrace the more reflective conservatism of Lampedusa’s The Leopard: “If we want things to stay as they are,” Rajoy might reflect, “things will have to change”.

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The party’s rise has been precipitous. Within months of its founding on the 17th of January 2014, Podemos secured 1.25 million votes in that year’s European Parliament elections. By mid-2015 it had taken control of major cities such as Barcelona, Madrid, Cádiz and Zaragoza in the municipal elections, and shortly thereafter Podemos ranked first in some national polls. The party’s leader, Pablo Iglesias, had the highest approval rating of any Spanish politician at the time.

Podemos ultimately went on to finish an impressive third at the 2015 National Election with 20 per cent of the vote. ‘Podemos is here to stay’, declared the El Español newspaper.

A slightly disappointing 2016 election followed – Unidos Podemos (United We Can), a coalition of Podemos and the communist-dominated United Left, shed more than a million votes. Yet a party founded less than two years previously had nonetheless managed to scoop over 20 per cent of the national vote share in two successive elections. Polling carried out earlier this year shows Podemos retaining roughly that level of support. Both its rapid rise and persistent strength shows Podemos is a force to be reckoned with.

Podemos first emerged from the 15-M Movement, a series of 20,000 street protests that rocked Spain’s largest towns and cities in 2011. The ‘indignados’, as they were called, first gathered in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square on May 15, 2011. Inspired by the Tahrir Square demonstrations that had ousted Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak three months earlier, the indignados refused to decamp from the square for several weeks, despite the lingering presence of the sinister Guardia Civil, Spain’s quasi military-police force. The protests were an expression of anger at the bail-out of the banks and the government’s (in this case the Socialist Party’s) imposition of austerity policies. One of the movement’s slogans was ‘No es una crisis, es una estafa’ – It’s not a crisis, it’s a con.

I recently visited Spain for UnHerd to try and understand the ideas and people that animate this new power. Prior to leaving London for Madrid I had met up at a pub near Victoria Station with the academic and member of Podemos’ London ‘Circle’ Sirio Canós Donnay. Circles are territorial or sectoral groups of people with an interest in Podemos – both inside as well as outside of Spain. They are the equivalent of a left-wing party branch meeting, though with fewer strictures handed down from on high beyond some basic democratic and organisational rules.

Sirio tells me that the initial purpose of the indignados movement – often referred to simply as M-15 – was to shift public consciousness away from the idea that the economic crisis engulfing Spain was a product of invisible market forces or personal irresponsibility:

“Collective problems had been [up to then] perceived as individual ones…At first [the indignados] were saying they [the political establishment] don’t represent us, the goods [are] in the hands of politicians and bankers.”

Similar protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street, Occupy London and the Geração à Rasca in Portugal were springing up at about the same time. These manifestations of anger and frustration would ultimately fizzle out.

A rejection of social democracy as well as the free market Right

Wider public blame for the financial crisis was often laid at the door of ruling social democratic parties and what was perceived as their excessive spending. In Britain, Gordon Brown’s New Labour government left power after 13 years on the back of a pledge by Conservative Party leader David Cameron to implement an unyielding programme of cuts and to create a “low-tax, low-debt economy”. Amid high unemployment and a growing number of home repossessions, Spain’s ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) suffered the same fate as New Labour. In November 2011 it crashed to its worst election result since the 1977 transition to democracy. As we drink very English glasses of London pale ale, Sirio reflects on those results:

“Something that was quite tough for all of us involved in the movement was that the same year the indignados took the squares and the country by storm, there were general elections and the conservatives won by an overwhelming national majority. And that was quite difficult to understand. Many people said ‘let’s leave things as they are, Spain will never change’”.

Yet the anger provoked by the economic crisis and recession was still there; it simply required a movement to channel it effectively. Unemployment in Spain remains at 22% even today, the second highest in the Eurozone after Greece. Youth unemployment sits at 41%.

Podemos stands out from some of the other movements which occupied European plazas and boulevards in 2011 in that there was always a sense among organizers that the residual and simmering anger had to be transmitted into something solid. Sirio again:

“Traditional parties thought it was safe because they kept winning elections, but there was some much broader cultural movement that had radically changed Spanish society. But it needed somebody to translate that, and that first occurred with Podemos and with the local coalitions that fought for the local elections.”

The 2011 Europe-wide anti-austerity protests were largely mocked by established political parties and establishment journals – often, paradoxically, by the same people and organs that would complacently pour scorn on the prospect of Brexit and a Donald Trump Presidency five years later. “This is not a revolution in the making,” declared the London Economist as it cast a scornful eye on student activists who took to a wintry Parliament Square in late 2010, perhaps living up to Lenin’s famous description of the paper as “a journal which speaks for British millionaires”.

Five years later the Economist and similar publications were caught completely flat-footed by the ascension of Jeremy Corbyn to the summit of the Labour Party.

In Spain, M-15 activists anticipated the accusation that their movement consisted of pampered students and the usual far-left troublemakers engaged in revolution as play. Podemos’ founding manifesto, published in January 2014, was titled Mover ficha: convertir la indignación en cambio político (’Making a move: turning indignation into political change’).

One of the things which disorientated the wider Spanish left was Podemos’ almost gleeful jettisoning of the terms left and right. And a degree of suspicion was perhaps wise given recent history: beyond left and right was often the snake oil used to sell the third way (along with other vacuous doggerel: forward, not back).

NOT joining the gravy train

Now that the party is a real player on the Spanish political scene – it has 71 MPs and 5 MEPs – Podemos is seeking to prevent a cleavage opening up between itself and those it represents. It is doing this by, inter alia, adopting an old idea brought to fleeting prominence in Britain in the 1980s by Coventry MP Dave Nellist. Between 1983 to 1992, Nellist, a Labour MP subsequently expelled from the party for being a member of the Trotskyist Militant Tendency, drew the equivalent of what was then called a ‘workers’ wage’. This was calculated at about 40 per cent of an MP’s salary.

Podemos have adopted something similar in Spain, with its 71 MPs taking home a wage that is no more than three minimum wages (707.60 EUR) per month. The rest of the money goes to the party as well as to local social projects. Any income received by anyone working in any capacity for Podemos is also published on the party’s website.

“There’s certain tendencies in the system,” Sirio tells me: “Some people, when they become MPs, their metabolism changes and they just become completely different people.”

The trend in Leninist parties toward what Leon Trotsky in 1904 prophetically termed ‘substitutionism’ – the inclination on the part of party insiders to substitute themselves for the class they supposedly represent – is an (albeit reversible) feature of representative democracy too. An MP may enter parliament with the support of his or her working class constituents; yet on attaining power their material interests often clash with those they claim to represent. MPs of all parties can subsequently behave as a class for themselves, with an increasing chasm opening up between parliament and ordinary people.

The importance of remaining materially in touch the electorate is important for Podemos’ moral message, too

“It was Gramsci who said that every crisis is also a moral crisis,” says Adriá Porta Caballé, an academic who previously worked for the party’s deputy leader, Íñigo Errejón. He continues:

“And one of the things that surprised the left [was that], apart from the social populist dichotomies like oligarchies versus people and citizens versus privileged elites, we also used moral ones, like decent people versus corruption and so on.”

Following the disappointing 2016 election result, the unity of the early days has given way in recent times to something of an ideological rupture at the top of Podemos.

“In 2016 there was an ideological and political change in Podemos,” the party’s 34-year-old Deputy Leader and Political Secretary Íñigo Errejón told the Eldiario.es newspaper in February 2017. He added that the party was “more worried about showing how far away it is from the other parties than about setting the agenda in our country”.

The split centred around an alliance with the old Spanish Communist Party (PCE) under the umbrella of Podemos’ electoral alliance with United Left (IU). Spain has a strong anarchist tradition and many activists (both pragmatic and further left) were unhappy with Iglesias’ decision to bring the formerly Soviet-orientated communists into the Podemos tent. Errejón himself was thought to favour a more conciliatory approach to the PSOE (though the PSOE itself sought to forge an alliance instead with Ciudadanos, another new party that holds seats in the Cortes).

In one sense the gravitation toward the communists made sense for both parties. United Left won more than 900,000 votes in the December 2015 election, yet was rewarded with just two seats in congress due to Spain’s electoral system. Combined, the votes of Podemos and United Left would have seen the two parties come within a whisker of the Socialist Party in terms of seats in the Congress at the same election.

On forming the alliance for the 2016 election, called because of the inability of any party to form a government after the inconclusive result of 2015, Podemos and IU retained their own party logos and each party’s candidates stood on their respective rosters. There were of course areas of disagreement – NATO membership and the Spanish Royal family to cite two examples that were emitted from the United Podemos manifesto – but the party was as one on the essentials: a programme of higher taxes for the rich and a renegotiation of the fiscal target with Brussels.

Yet lining up alongside the hammer and sickle-waving communists – in a country where the Civil War remains a pertinent part of the cultural backdrop – came pregnant with risk. There was always a chance it would drive away centrist voters attracted by Podemos’ promise to break free from the clichés of the past. Podemos first captured the imagination in Spain with its wedding of material criticisms of Spanish society – unemployment, poverty and corruption – to moral categories that people can easily digest, something the populist right has been doing for years.

“Every revolution is first of all a revolution against the existing left,” says Porta Caballé. “And I think that’s one of the things we did.”

Going into the 2016 election, the assumption on the part of many inside both Podemos and IU was that the votes of both parties would simply collect in United Podemos. As such, predictions abounded of the party overtaking the Socialist Party and becoming the second largest political force in Spain.

As it transpired, United Left went on to win a million fewer votes than its constituent parties had done at the 2015 election; Iglesias emerged from the election a diminished figure.

Inside Podemos, however, Iglesias is still firmly in control. The inter-party struggle between Iglesias and Errejón was settled with a resounding victory for the incumbent leader at the party’s February 2017 congress in Madrid. After several months of public infighting, Iglesias’ political agenda secured the support of 56% of Podemos activists against 33% who voted for Errejón’s programme. Iglesias also won re-election as Secretary General with 89% of the vote against Andalusian MP Juan Moreno Yagüe.

Yet Iglesias sounded a conciliatory note in the wake of the result, telling the Guardian that he wanted to “have the best people close to me even if they don’t think like me.”

Whether Iglesias intends to further entrench Podemos’ rapprochement with the communist left is hard to say, though it would appear to contradict the ideas set out in his book Politics in a Time of Crisis, written shortly after the founding of Podemos in 2014. In the text, Iglesias approvingly sums up Podemos’ provocative political style as contained in the phrase ‘If you want to get it right, don’t do what the left would do’.

These don’t appear to be the words of a thuggish Stalinist dialectician. But then the foreword to the book is written by one Alexis Tsipras, the fleeting golden boy of the new European left who kept Greece in the Eurozone by implementing the very austerity measures his party set everything on opposing. That isn’t Iglesias’ fault of course. But it does rather lend weight to George Orwell’s point about saints (even socialist saints) being ‘judged guilty until they are proved innocent’.

As for getting closer to real power, the PSOE’s refusal to countenance a deal with Podemos does not mean the new party cannot bring its influence to bear on the PSOE. With the election and re-election of the left-leaning Pedro Sanchez, the PSOE has already embarked on baby steps in the direction of the radical younger party. This suits Podemos, as the insurgent party can retain its radicalism and build a new hegemony without sacrificing its edge to the blunting tendencies of power. Should the PSOE change its mind about an alliance at some later date, Podemos can perhaps view its own role in any governing coalition as one of keeping the bigger party honest.

For it is difficult at present to see how Podemos’ strengthening of ties with the old left does anything other than put an artificial ceiling on the level of support the party might pick up. Pace Pedro Iglesias, the greatest danger for the party is not that it ‘sells out’ in the manner of Tsipras in Greece, but that it is pulled down into the subterranean obscurity of the far-left.

Notwithstanding any tribulations of this kind, the more fundamental question is whether or not Podemos can retain its compartmentalized separation of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ populism in perpetuity. For there is always a danger that, once you require a group of permanent outsiders to define your politics, the search for enemies never ends. The triumph over one adversary necessitates the creation of another. To paraphrase Nietzsche, he who fights demagogues risks becoming a demagogue himself.

Part three of this series – on Podemos and Catalonia will appear tomorrow.

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You can learn a great deal in Spain, as elsewhere, by paying close attention to the names that adorn public buildings. Since 2014, travellers flying into Madrid have landed at the slightly shabby ‘Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport’. Suarez was Spain’s first post-Franco democratically elected Prime Minister; his name was added upon his death three years ago.

Adolfo Suárez’s political life embodied contradiction. A conservative Catholic and former Franco-era minister, during the democratic transition he nonetheless legalised the trade unions as well as the Spanish Communist Party (PCE). been impressed by the solemnity and discipline shown by the Communists at a 100,000-strong funeral for five people (including four of the party’s labour lawyers) who were shot dead by right-wing terrorists on Atocha Street in 1977, Suárez decided that it was time to legalise the PCE. They were, he concluded, self-contained enough to be a legitimate political force in the new Spain.

In the process Suárez took the unprecedented step of confronting the country’s powerful military establishment. Thus the Franco regime suffered a fate not dissimilar to that of several Eastern European post-war dictatorships: its final death warrant was signed by a middling bureaucrat spat out by its own nomenklatura.

Walking towards the Anton Martin district from south Madrid’s Atocha railway station, itself the scene of another massacre in 2004 as Islamist extremists planted bombs on packed commuter trains, any newly arrived visitor to Madrid soon encounters a haunting monument to those murdered during the ‘77 Atocha killings. In the cool and shady Anton Martin Square stand several inward-facing concrete human forms, perched atop a concrete plinth and locked in permanent embrace.

Basque terrorism and the central government’s forceful repression of the Catalonian independence referendum are more recent reminders that political disputes are not always peacefully resolved in Spain.

I followed the route past the square for a pre-arranged rendezvous with Jorge Moruno, one of the co-founders of Podemos in 2014 along with Pablo Iglesias and Miguel Urbán. He eventually arrived while I waited at the top of the steps to the Anton Martin metro station, a rare point of refuge from the sweltering midday sun.

Moruno is 34-years old, a sociology academic and the author of several books on the precarity of contemporary work. His explanation of Podemos’ appeal is both analytical and penetrating. Talking with him, one grasps that the secret of this “party of the left” is that it doesn’t always position itself on the left at all. Moruno explains, as I order a Café con leche in a nearby cafe:

“Nowadays we are supposed to be out of the crisis: Europe says, the Spanish government says, but seven of 10 families in Spain don’t see anything good…why? Because only the super-rich are seeing growth…inequality and poverty are still the same as two years ago.”

One of the words you hear a lot in Podemos is ‘hegemonía’ (hegemony), the concept of invisible power. This is an understanding of ideology as a material force in its own right, and lends itself to a political strategy based on forging a new window of acceptable wisdom through what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called a ‘war of position’.

The best recent example of a successful ‘war of position’ comes from the right. Asked what her greatest achievement was at a dinner for the Conservative MP Conor Burns, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously replied: “Tony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds”[1.  Report on ConservativeHome from 2008.]. The goings on at provincial Tory party dinners are not usually the talk of Spain’s tapas bars and cantinas, but this remark was quoted back to me by leftists on several occasions during my time in Spain, and usually with a twinge of admiration. Mrs Thatcher’s conquest of her social democratic opponents – and their subsequent capitulation to the new common sense – was replicated to some extent in every western democracy in the 1980s, so that even her opponents came to accept the central tenets of her programme.

This is what Moruno calls the “discourse battleground”, and it is impossible to understand the rise of Podemos without first understanding both the degree to which social democracy suffered an internal collapse at the end of the twentieth century, but also the attempt by Podemos to forge a new hegemony in Spain.

“Margaret Thatcher…won one fundamental thing and this is why we talk about common sense…Because she was really a populist. If you listen to Margaret Thatcher, she didn’t talk to the rich people, she talked about the return of power to the people. A popular capitalism…I don’t like this way of thinking, but she won the battle of the 70s and 80s, the class struggle of the 70s and 80s.”

Following the restoration of democracy in Spain, the PSOE pursued an ideological trajectory similar to that of centre-left parties across Europe and the United States. As the left attempted to account for the crimes of Stalinism in the east and the challenges posed by the spread of Reagan-Thatcher economics in the west, mainstream social democratic parties began to gravitate rightwards – and in the eyes of many on the left away from the people they were elected to represent.

But then came the crash of ten years ago.

The 2008 crash posed big questions for Blairism, Clintonism and other social democrats

The ‘third-way’ hubris of the nineties and noughties was buried under $600 billion of Lehman Brothers debt, the territory that politicians such as Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero had surrendered came back into play.

“This political space [has appeared], why?” Moruno asks me rhetorically…

“Because 30 years ago until now, they [social democrats] are making the same politics, the economic politics, as the conservative parties.”

When those politics produced the 2008 crash, these parties were seen as a cause of rather than the solution to the crisis.

The Podemos ‘hypothesis’ is built on three main tenets: the post-Gramscian idea of hegemony; the creation of a radical participatory democracy; and the ‘populist situation’ window of opportunity.

With respect to the latter of these, Podemos moved deftly, once the enthusiasm of the indignados had begun to wane, to channel the street protests into an effective electoral project. Adolpho Suarez had outfoxed the aging gargoyles of the Francoist establishment through sheer speed of action. Before they realised quite what he was up to, their power had been pulled from underneath them like the cloth whipped off a dining table. Podemos has gained ground in Spain through a similar seizing of the initiative.

Part of the reason this ‘window of opportunity’ has been seized by a party of the left rather than, as in most of Europe, by the nationalistic right lies in Spain’s failure to account for its past. Spain is the second country after Cambodia in terms of the documented cases of disappeared victims of political repression. In 1977, two years after the dictator’s death, an amnesty law was passed which granted most of Franco’s henchmen the right to die peacefully in their beds. Thirty years later the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero did pass the Historical Memory Law, which granted state aid to help locate and exhume some of the more than 100,000 missing persons from the post-war period. But the ruling Popular Party (PP) has since stated that it will grant “not one public euro for the exhumation of mass graves”. Financial support was withdrawn soon after Mariano Rajoy’s electoral victory in late 2011.

There has in other words been little of what has come to be known euphemistically as ‘de-Baathification’ in Spain. The Popular Party was founded by Manuel Fraga, one of Franco’s former ministers. In the early years it contained many former Francoists in its ranks. Nowadays the PP is in most respects a conventional European centre-right party. Yet its antecedents in Francoism – the sickly blend of authoritarianism, right-wing Catholicism and ‘family values’ which dominated the country for nearly half a century – has allowed it to retain an electoral hold over the contemporary far-right. There has been no comparable David Cameron figure in Spain who has felt secure enough to dismiss those on his right flank as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. And so it has been estimated that over 80% of people who describe themselves as far-right voted for Mariano Rajoy in the two most recent national elections.

Unapologetic admiration for the Generalissimo is, for the most part, a niche affair in Spain. A handful of extremists still gather every year at the Valle de los Caídos, a huge basilica just outside Madrid, to commemorate Franco’s death and sing the Cara al Sol with an arm flung skyward in a Roman salute (or to most of us, a Nazi salute). But most people just get on with the act of getting on – forgetting the 1936-39 civil war and subsequent dictatorship was officially enshrined in Spain’s transition to democracy forty years ago.

There have been a few frustrated attempts to revive a distinctive right-wing populism in recent times. The most high profile of these was Vox, a right-wing Catholic party founded in December 2013 by disgruntled elements within the Popular Party. Vox pledged to criminalise abortion, crackdown on migrants and create a more centralised state. Yet despite the relative success of similar parties across Europe’s more northerly regions, the party failed to win any seats at the 2014 European elections.

Ciudadanos (‘Citizens’) is arguably another ‘populist’ party that has emerged in Spain in recent years. It is intensely hostile to Catalonian independence and has in the past proposed that undocumented migrants be stripped on the right to healthcare in Spain. Founded in 2006 by former Popular Party member Albert Riveras, after nearly a decade in Catalan politics Ciudadanos announced that it would field candidates at the 2015 national election. The party rose up the polls rapidly at first, winning 40 seats; yet it was leapfrogged at the same election by Podemos, who finished third. The result was replicated in 2016, when Cuidanos lost eight of the seats it had won barely six months earlier.

The most electrifying insurgent response to the 2008 financial crisis has undoubtedly come from Podemos. The party’s ‘economic plan for the people’, released in 2014, called for a higher minimum wage, a 35-hour week and the restructuring of the country’s national debt.^[i] It also included plans to nationalise Spain’s utilities – though notably this was left out of Podemos’ 2015 election manifesto.

The hegemonía of the wider political order has already started to shift. The PSOE recently re-elected Pedro Sanchez, a politician of the left who, like Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, enjoys the support of grassroots party members and provokes the reflexive hostility of party grandees.

“So we talk about these things, and now the socialist party is talking about them,” says Moruno. “So the real hegemony is when your words are the words that your adversaries use…So hegemony is to…[bring] the others to come to your side and talk about the topics you want to talk about.”

This evidently works best with opponents you are in close proximity to. The real work – of bringing about a transformation of wider society – begins when you have power, and when your opponents are scrambling around desperately trying to adapt to the new consensus.

Podemos is especially influenced by the post-Gramscian ideas of the late Argentinian professor Ernesto Laclau and the Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe. Their theory of populism posits that political movements draw their strength from the groups that stand in opposition to them. “Every identity is dislocated insofar as it depends on an outside which both denies that identity and provides its condition of possibility at the same time,” as Professor Laclau[1.  Laclau: A Critical Reader, Simon Critchly, Oliver Marchart, 2012.] phrases it.

And so rather than abandon the territory of ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups to right-wing populism, Podemos has introduced dichotomies more to its own liking:

The people versus the oligarchy;

The ‘99%’ versus ‘the 1%’;

The top versus the bottom.

In other words, in order to slay the dragon you have to become a dragon yourself.

Witnessing first-hand the rise of obscurantism and xenophobia in 1930s Europe, Victor Serge, in his Memoirs of a Revolutionary, warned that it was:

“The failures of the others that makes for the strength of the Führers. When there’s no worthwhile banner, you start to march behind worthless ones”.

The rise of the likes of Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán on the back of widespread working class support is, on this analysis, an indictment of the left.

Adriá Porta Caballé, an academic who previously worked for the party’s deputy leader, Íñigo Errejón, made a similar point when I met him in Barcelona a few days after my chat with Moruno:

“Wherever populism is hegemonised by reactionary forces, it is a symptom that the left has been defeated there, because it’s not doing the battle at the same level.”

During the Brexit referendum campaign back in Britain, the prominent Leave campaigner Michael Gove was widely ridiculed for saying that Britons had “had enough of experts”. But Britain’s current environment secretary was onto something. There is dwindling faith in the idea of managerial politics, as it is pursued by professional technicians and often devoid of conflict. Porta Caballé told me over a glass of beer at the Baccardi Cafe on Barcelona’s Paseo de Sant Joan that he believes this way of doing politics is “dead”:

“This social democratic third way dream that we could have a democracy that would be purely rational and deliberistic without antagonism, I think it’s dead… If you want to fight fascism and racism, it is not enough to say ‘oh this is irrational, this is not right, if you look at the statistics this is not gonna happen’. Because fascism and racism are presenting…a very strong conflict, and if you want to displace that you have to present another one. Which can be much more positive… But you have to confront them on the basis of passions.”

When Podemos first appeared on the scene, the party’s apathetic approach toward traditional categories and shibboleths predictably angered some within the old guard of the Spanish left, as all breaks with established doctrine invariably do.

“Podemos was born talking about how the problem is not [whether] you call yourself left or more right…The problem is bottom up,” Moruno tells me back in Madrid.

“And this broke the political framework because if you proclaim ‘I am more left than the socialists’, you will always be the little child of the Socialist Party. And we said no, we have to kick the table [away], and we have to change the positions. The problem is not [whether] you are left or right, the problem is democracy against oligarchy.”

Moruno is fairly unrelenting in his criticism of established communist parties – both in Spain and elsewhere – despite the fact that Pablo Iglesias’ faction of the party appears to have effectively formed a loose alliance with the PCE. Moruno sees a breach with the old left as inevitable.

“The Stalinist party, if in the general elections they have less votes than the last time, they think that this is better, that they are making progress because this means that the bourgeoisie are working against them. So it’s more than that you can’t talk to the people; it’s a symbol you are doing well! So this is the worst legacy of the Soviet Union: the political culture of the communist parties…I think in the entire twentieth century, the communist parties used to take the conservative position at every important historical point.”

At the 2016 election Podemos promised to make the country ‘smile’ again. Yet the party surprised many of its supporters by leaving the introduction of a Basic Income – an all-the-rage economic idea whereby every citizen would receive a flat amount of money every month whether in work or not – out of its manifesto.

Moruno is adamant, however, that the future of left-wing politics – the “spirit of communism”, as he calls it – should be rooted in a shift away from the fetishisation of labour and toward a future in which, to paraphrase Karl Marx’s famous remark, the citizen would be free to ‘hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, criticise in the evening…without ever becoming hunter, fisherman or critic’. Moruno:

“We have the possibility for the first time to make another kind of society where the working contract, or the salary they pay you, [isn’t] the central point of our biographies. When we talk about class, [the] working class, what does it mean today? Because there are a lot of kinds of working…We can [also] value activities that don’t receive pay. Because in the capitalist society it’s considered that it’s only a [proper] activity if they pay you for it. And you can only receive an income if you have this kind of work. We have to explode this logic. We have to value social activities that don’t receive money, and we have to make another kind of income independent of work.”

Too often in recent times the left has retreated to a purely critical and theoretical bearing. It has lived “in the midst of ideas about people, instead of among the people themselves”, as Czeslaw Milosz wrote in his humanist critique of Polish Stalinism. The danger inherent in the alliance Podemos forged with the traditional left at the 2016 election is that, to paraphrase Marx, all the old crap might revive. The old divisions of the past could creep back in, inducing sclerosis in the young patient.

Yet the idea that Podemos could remain forever equidistant from the old divisions – that the party could be viewed in perpetuity as non-ideological or ‘beyond left or right’ – was perhaps far-fetched to begin with. If you believe that politics is fundamentally about a clash of interests, then it is possible that those interests roughly correlate to the divisions of the past, even today.

The question, then, is how to forge a new left on the bones of the old – and how to do so without being dragged under by the various historical re-enactment societies with their desire to repeat the twentieth century all over again.

Moruno is interested in winning the smaller political battles of the present; but he keeps coming back to the importance of thrashing out a captivating vision of the future.

“It’s not enough to talk about how bad things are, we need to project another kind of future [that is] different than the way we live nowadays,” Moruno says before we exchange fraternal goodbyes and I head back towards Atocha Station to catch my train to Barcelona.

Earlier on, as we had sat down in the coffee shop, Moruno noticed me brandishing – tourist-like – a book on the Civil War. Moruno believes that one of the problems with the contemporary left is its obsession with defensively re-fighting the battles of the past.

“If you don’t hold up a vision of the future, you become conservative…This is a big problem of all the European societies because we don’t have another utopia…A lot of years ago there was socialism or barbarism. Now we only have the barbarism. So the problem is we need also a new horizon, a new utopia…to [show] it is possible that we can live better.”

All successful populist movements draw their lifeforce from the absolute certainty that those in power no longer care about their people. Therefore to renew the country, the people (as defined by the populists) must cast off these parasites like a dog shaking off its fleas.

Podemos has retained this ‘in’ and ‘out’ dichotomy – while redefining it on its own terms. Meanwhile it has eschewed the usual lug-rotting leftist jargon that inspires such a state of resentful boredom in most remotely normal human beings.

For this alone Podemos should command a degree of respect; and it is why I suspect they will be a fixture on the Spanish scene for the foreseeable future.

Please call by tomorrow for part two of this three-part profile of Podemos.