"Look, those people are your enemies.”

April 1, 2015 1:10 PM

On stage that day, Iglesias declared that Podemos would take back power from self-serving elites and hand it over to the people. To do that, the new party needs votes. If that means arousing emotions and being accused of populism, so be it. And, as the party’s founders have already shown, if they have to renounce some of their ideas in order to broaden their appeal, or risk upsetting some in their grassroots movement by tightening central control, they are ready to do that, too. The aim, after all, is to win.

Also in the Guardian:

A much shorter news item on Ciudadanos, a right-wing counterpart to Podemos based in Catalonia.

Why Ernesto Laclau is the intellectual figurehead for Syriza and Podemos.

The economic situation in Spain, previously. Previously. Previously.

posted by Rustic Etruscan (8 comments total)

"Iglesias" is Spanish for "church" and "podemos" is Spanish for "[yes] we can." Upon reading the first line of the FPP, I honestly thought it was going to be some sort of parable about the 2008 Obama campaign.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:21 PM on April 1, 2015

The "figurehead" article does not really convince me that the author knows much about Laclau, though it's certainly the case that he's one of a few key thinkers for Podemos's tactical populism. And trucking Syriza into it is less convincing still: Nicos Poulantzas is a much likelier candidate for their theoretical figurehead, whatever that means in the first place.
posted by RogerB at 1:58 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Here's a basic backgrounder on Poulantzas and Eurocommunism from Souciant, in case that helps fill in a little more context for anyone.
posted by RogerB at 2:05 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Spain is fast reverting to a quasi fascist state with the newly intended Ley Mordaza (Gag Law) becoming operative July 1st. Criticizing the state will become an offense..
posted by adamvasco at 2:26 PM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Podemos tweets in English.
Latin America and Spain's Podemos: Between Hegemony and Multitude.
The Rise of Podemos - Real News - Pt I; Pt II, & Pt III; all videos with transcripts.
posted by adamvasco at 7:11 PM on April 1, 2015

Naked Capitalism: Rajoy Horror Picture Show Nears Grisly Climax in Spain

In Spain, the Eurozone’s fourth largest economy, the stage is set for a grisly finale of the Rajoy Horror Picture Show. In roughly seven or eight months (the exact date is still to be confirmed), Spaniards will vote in general elections that could dramatically reconfigure the country’s political landscape. For the first time in decades, the stranglehold of the two main parties over Spanish politics is under threat.

Spain’s establishment parties, Prime Minister Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP) and Pedro Sanchez’s so-called socialist party (PSOE), are facing sustained pressure from both sides of the political spectrum: two new parties – Pablo Iglesias’ anti-austerity movement Podemos and Albert Rivera’s Catalonia-based center-right grouping Ciutadans (or Cuidadanos in Spanish) – enchant the disenchanted masses. As I reported in November last year, if Spain’s new political forces continue to capture the hearts and minds of the disaffected that now represent a very large minority, if not the majority, they could hammer a deep nail into the country’s two-party system. While winning the elections is an almost mathematical impossibility, either party could become kingmaker, or kingbreaker!

posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:31 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Spain is fast reverting to a quasi fascist state with the newly intended Ley Mordaza (Gag Law) becoming operative July 1st. Criticizing the state will become an offense..

More on this from the writer of the Naked Capitalism piece above: Spain Takes a Giant Step Backward, Towards Its Dark Past

Here’s a quick breakdown of the financial sanctions the government seeks to impose (and, of course, collect upon) for acts of political protest or disobedience:

• Surrounding a government building: €30,000
• Criticizing or insulting the country, government or head of state during a protest or on social media: €30,000
• Participating in a demonstration that does not have the government’s prior approval: €100 – €1,000
• Organizing a demonstration that turns violent: €30,000
• Participating non-violently in a demonstration that gets out of control: €1,000
• Refusal to show personal documentation (I.D. card, passport) to the police: €1,000
• Uploading images of riot police in action that the government considers against their honor, intimacy or the public image of the police force: €100-€1,000.
• Taking part in a demonstration outside a political party’s headquarters on election day: €30,000-€600,000.
• Trying to prevent the forced eviction of a local resident, something that has become common practice among communities in recent years: €1,000-€30,000.

The list goes on and on while the fines rise and fall between €100 and €600,000. For the government, the sweeping new measures are all about “securing public order,” as a prerequisite for “ensuring individual liberty” – a roundabout way of saying that it is instituting a police state to protect itself.

posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:10 AM on April 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Trying to prevent the forced eviction of a local resident, something that has become common practice among communities in recent years

This is a direct attack on Podemos. Originally a bunch of spontaneous incidents where local people came out to protect one of their neighbors, these protests led to a nationwide movement, the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH). That movement formed a big part of the initial core of Podemos.

The PAH is curiously absent from the Guardian article, even though it might have been more influential in the genesis of Podemos than the university theoreticians. It's a mistake to view Podemos as a typical top-down party organization, when its rise has been fueled by the union of a lot of grass-roots movements that grew out of people's total disaffection with the traditional political process in a country with 25% unemployment.

In the town where I live, the top three people on the Podemos list for the coming municipal elections all lost their homes in the crash, and all three have a history of local organizing against our PP government's corrupt boondoggle construction projects.
posted by fuzz at 1:48 AM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]