[Peace-discuss] A New Political Force Emerges In Spain

Sun Sep 14 10:54:14 EDT 2014

  A New Political Force Emerges In Spain

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Organize! <http://www.popularresistance.org/category/organize/> Fascism 
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/fascism/>, Spain 
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/spain/>
By Sebastiaan Faber, www.albavolunteer.org 
<http://www.albavolunteer.org/2014/09/fighting-the-new-fascism-juan-carlos-monedero-on-podemos-spains-new-political-force/>
September 13th, 2014
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/Pablo Iglesias, leader of PODEMOS/

    Fighting the new fascism: Juan Carlos Monedero on PODEMOS, Spain's
    new political force

*/In Spain this past May, the usually dull and boring elections to the 
European Union's Parliament produced a sudden shock to the political 
system. A new two-month-old party led by a 35-year-old, pony-tailed 
political scientist, appeared out of nowhere---but clearly from the 
Left---to sweep up a surprising 8 percent of the votes. The result was 
good to win five European seats, transforming the infant organization 
into the country's 4th largest political force. One of the party's 
founders, political scientist Juan Carlos Monedero, spoke with us in 
late August./*

The unexpected European triumph of Spain's newcomer on the Left 
underscored the affirmative simplicity of its name---PODEMOS: /We Can./ 
Or perhaps better: /Together We Can Do It. /The party's rise has been 
meteoric. PODEMOS began as a grassroots movement in January 2014 and did 
not register as a party until March. Since the May elections, it has 
multiplied its support; according to an August 31 poll PODEMOS would 
earn 21 percent of the votes, only one percent less than the Socialist 
Party. Its political program, the details of which are still being 
defined, calls for broad political, economic, and social reforms: a new 
social contract that supersedes neoliberalism. (For more details see the 
sidebar 
<http://www.albavolunteer.org/2014/09/fighting-the-new-fascism-juan-carlos-monedero-on-podemos-spains-new-political-force/#podemos>.)

Juan Carlos Monedero. Photo Sarah Bienzobas. 
<http://www.albavolunteer.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Juan-Carlos-Monedero-1.jpg>

Among the party's most prominent public faces is Juan Carlos Monedero, a 
political scientist at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Monedero 
has extensive international experience as a consultant to progressive 
politicians (particularly in Latin America), has worked for years with 
Spain's United Left, is a fixture in the Spanish media, and has served 
as an academic mentor to PODEMOS leader Pablo Iglesias. (More on 
Monedero here 
<http://www.albavolunteer.org/2014/09/fighting-the-new-fascism-juan-carlos-monedero-on-podemos-spains-new-political-force/#jcm>.) 

Monedero's life since May has been a whirlwind, with almost daily 
appearances on television, trips abroad, and feverish preparations to 
get PODEMOS ready for its first constitutive congress in September. In 
this first extensive interview to be published in English since the rise 
of PODEMOS, Monedero spoke to /The Volunteer /about the birth of the 
party and his role in it; the Spanish crisis; the progressive tradition; 
the lessons from Latin America; and the future of his country. "I am a 
hopeful pessimist. We're facing a long and difficult struggle. But we 
have plenty of reasons to keep fighting."

*/Why PODEMOS and why now?/*

JCM: Those of us who launched PODEMOS found each other in the Faculty of 
Political Science and Sociology in Madrid, and in /La Tuerka, /a 
political debate program. We agreed that the model of Spanish democracy 
as it had been established in 1978 was exhausted, and we felt the same 
about representative democracy under neoliberalism in general. What 
compelled us into action in early 2014 was a series of different 
factors. First, the United Left (IU) unilaterally abandoned a project 
that had tried to bring different political forces together. Second, the 
European elections in May opened a window of opportunity. These are the 
only elections in Spain that bypass electoral districts, so that every 
vote counts the same, and they draw a relatively low turnout, so that 
fewer votes are needed for a seat. It was an attractive opportunity to 
try for an electoral breakthrough. Finally, Pablo Iglesias had become a 
very powerful presence in the media, while I had spent a couple of years 
traveling all over Spain to give talks. So a whole range of elements 
coincided: the possibility of a nationwide network, our media presence, 
the European window of opportunity, the exhaustion of the current 
regime---and the fact that some polls indicated that there was electoral 
room for a new political party. Like in a fairy tale, everything came 
together: the princess, the castle, the woods, the frog-turned-prince, 
the seven-league boots. All we needed was the kiss---which we got on May 
25 in the form of 1,250,000 votes.

*/You are part of the PODEMOS leadership but are not yourself running 
for office./*

JCM: Yes, and that is on purpose. Among the founding group we decided 
that only Pablo Iglesias would run. This is our way of showing the 
voters that we are not in this for a cushy political job. That there is 
a different way of doing politics. We are now working toward the 
constitutive congress, from which an elected leadership team will emerge.

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