It’s true, Podemos is applying our prescriptions four years late. That’s not a problem: it’s a classic political move to implement someone else’s proposals once you’ve gotten them out the way.
But the reason this is more than an irony of my personal experience is that these proposals are being implemented after Spain has already changed. The balance of forces is drastically different from 2016. Back then, Podemos was leading the progressive camp and was Spain’s most powerful force with the mayoralties of many big cities: Madrid, Cádiz, A Coruña, Bilbao, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Valencia . . . We had the wind in our sails; it seemed clear that we were going to take over the government at some point. Moreover, the far right hadn’t yet emerged, the PP was in a dire crisis over its corruption cases, and the national conflict between Catalonia and the Spanish state — helping explain the later rise of Vox — hadn’t yet exploded in all its virulence.
In 2016, we negotiated practically on an equal footing with PSOE, either for a government including Podemos or else one reliant on its external support and conditioned by its pressure. There was still the sense that we were on the up, that our ideas were Spain’s ideas. But when an agreement was reached four years later, it came after a notable erosion of both signatories’ forces, and especially that of Podemos, which had lost almost half of its support and much of its intellectual, media, and political leadership capacity. In the meantime, we’ve seen the rise of the far right and — with all the repeat elections — a certain anti-politics. Superficially, it may seem like this is the same climate in which 15-M was born, but it’s the opposite.
So this government emerged with a tactical objective: to stop the Right. That’s understandable, but a much more reformist objective than in previous years. Our aim had been to open a constituent process. In 2015, very radical objectives were set out in very mild words. The current Podemos has very soft objectives with very radical words. It seeks to hold back the Right with inflamed discourse and rhetorical and ideological grandstanding. This is basically the reestablishment of the categories of the bipartidismo that governed Spain since the 1980s, meaning not just two dominant parties but also a small party to the left of the PSOE.
My analysis of what the government is doing? It’s halfway through the legislature and in a good position to change course. But so far it has more in the debt column than to its credit. It has not fulfilled even a fraction of the expectations it raised, despite having social support. Never as in times of pandemic has the Spanish citizenry understood that the common good exists and that a strong state is necessary, not only to pay debts and provide loans but also to intervene in the economy, set a political horizon, and guarantee rights. Moreover, it has the important resource of European funds, with an expansive policy from Brussels, and the possibility of directing them toward a change of model. And, above all, it has a parliamentary majority to do whatever it wants, like repealing the labor reforms that made Spain’s labor market more precarious, ending the “gag law” that restricts the fundamental rights of assembly and expression, regulating the electricity market faced with the energy giants, etc.
But so far this government hasn’t given its supporters much cause to defend it. It has managed the pandemic in a more socially sensitive way than the PP would have done. But that isn’t enough to keep it in office. It needs to produce real, far-reaching transformations in citizens’ lives, so that they see that there is a substantial difference between the Right and a progressive coalition governing. Today, most citizens watch the news with immense emotional disenchantment. When this cynicism spreads that everything is a lie and the only truth is the “nature” of the market, this always translates into reactionary results.
