This weekend, Spain was rocked by a political earthquake of potentially historic proportions. On Sunday, El País published a widely anticipated poll that shows Podemos — the anti-establishment upstart that emerged out of the indignados movement earlier this year — trumping both the governing Popular Party and the opposition Socialist Party to take first place with 27.7% of the projected votes. For a country that has been ruled by two establishment parties for four decades, and for a political force that did not even exist as recently as ten months ago, the results are nothing short of spectacular.
For those who have been following the social situation in Spain, however, the seismic shift has been long in the making. For years now, an imploding housing bubble and severe austerity measures have conspired to keep the country stuck in a deadly trap of insurmountable debt, economic stagnation and profound polarization. Almost a quarter of Spaniards and more than one in two young people are out of work, while nearly one in three children live in poverty or at risk of social exclusion. The amount of people who rely on food handouts has doubled to 1.5 million since the start of the crisis.
Meanwhile, as ordinary people suffer the brunt of brutal cutbacks, the political and financial establishment continues to stumble from one corruption scandal to the next. Last year, Spain fell 10 places in the Corruption Perceptions Index to 40th position, making it the second biggest loser in rank after Syria. At this point, nearly 2,000 legislators are under investigation for corruption. Just last month, yet another scandal emerged that saw dozens of leading bankers and politicians receive “phantom” credit cards from regional savings banks to make hundreds of thousands in undeclared luxury expenses.
Last week, Prime Minister Rajoy was forced to make a rare and embarrassing public apology after several party officials were arrested for receiving kickbacks in return for 250 million euros in public spending on unnecessary construction projects, even as the government was carrying out the most severe austerity measures in Spanish history. Unsurprisingly, the deepening of the crisis and the seemingly endless accumulation of graft and corruption cases have sent public trust in the political establishment to an all-time low of 18%. Four out of five Spaniards simply do not believe in politicians anymore.
It was in this context of crisis and corruption that millions took the streets in the spring and summer 2011 to denounce the entire political class, to declare their opposition to the market-imposed austerity measures and neoliberal reforms, and to demand real democracy now. As a wave of protests and occupations spread across the country, the two-party system effectively entered into a terminal crisis. According to research by Ipsos Public Affairs, between 6 and 8.5 million Spaniards participated in the 15-M movement, easily making it the largest popular mobilization in Spain’s post-Civil War history.
Perversely, however, the immediate consequence of the massive protests was to oust the thoroughly delegitimized Socialist Party from office and bring the right-wing Popular Party back into power, thus leading to an intensification of the austerity measures and the systemic corruption. For three long, exasperating but also immensely creative and inspirational years, Spain’s powerful grassroots movements retained their complete autonomy from the political system and kept organizing truly massive street protests. But their demands were simply ignored. Protesters and organizers were met with increasingly violent police repression and a range of anti-protest lawsthat sought to stamp out the remaining opposition with brute force.
Still, the mass mobilizations of 2011-’13 constituted a historic rupture with the political status quo and continued to transform Spanish society from below. As Carlos Delclós and Raimundo Viejo put it for ROAR, by early 2012, 15-M had stopped being a social movement and had transformed itself into a social climate. Grassroots struggles and self-managed initiatives took off across the country, giving rise to countless direct action campaigns, alternative economy projects, mutual aid and solidarity networks, and creative new forms of popular participation and horizontal self-organization. The new Spain was quietly growing in the cracks of the collapsing order, largely hidden from the view of politicians and the mainstream media.
It was in this social climate that Podemos arose earlier this year, founded just a few months before the European Parliamentary elections by a group of 15-M activists headed by political scientist Pablo Iglesias who aimed to give a political expression to the rapid radicalization and bottom-up transformation of Spanish society. Podemos’ meteoric rise in the polls has since become the clearest expression to date of the impending demise of Spain’s corrupt two-party system and the utter bankruptcy of Europe’s neoliberal austerity regime. As Íñigo Errejón tweeted, “We are at the turning point of two eras.”
Whether they support Podemos or not, a majority of Spaniards now seem to recognize that some kind of radical change is needed. An overwhelming 91% of respondents in the Metroscopia poll consider the present political situation to be “bad” or “very bad.” Even El País was forced to recognize.that “Podemos has provoked an unprecedented earthquake in Spanish politics and is now in a position to throw the electoral tables up in the air.” Much more than the charisma of its leaders or the resonance of its rhetoric, the party’s popularity is ultimately but a reflection of the complete delegitimation of the dominant parties and the profound and protracted process of radicalization that Spanish society has undergone in recent years.
General elections are due to be held in December next year and Podemos has so far deliberately set its priorities in reverse. As political scientist Juan Carlos Monedero puts it, “we first gave rise to the longing for the sea and then we started to build the ship.” If the longing proves to be strong enough and the ship is finished in time, Podemos may soon find itself side-by-side with it Greek counterpart, SYRIZA, braving the waves of a brand new chapter in the European debt crisis. The objective conditions appear to be right for an institutional offensive. The winds over the Mediterranean are blowing left.
Jerome Roos is a PhD researcher in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute, and founding editor of ROAR Magazine.
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