Theses on Podemos and the 'Democratic Revolution' in Spain
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- Published on Thursday, 07 May 2015 00:15
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1113 .... May 7, 2015
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Theses on Podemos and
the ‘Democratic Revolution’ in Spain
Raul Zelik
(Translation by Eric Canepa)
Even if one almost always goes wrong with such prognoses, the fact is that the Spanish state is facing the biggest rupture since the end of the Franco dictatorship. In several large cities, the left radical-democratic lists of the Guanyem / Ganemos Initiatives have real chances of winning the mayoral elections in May. In recent months in Catalonia, millions were on the street calling for the democratic right to self-determination, to which Madrid could only answer with new prohibitions. But it is above all the left party Podemos (We Can) that is dominating Spain's political landscape. According to some current polls, Podemos, though founded only in January 2014, is the... strongest party today with an almost 28 per cent voter approval, one year before the parliamentary elections.
What is more remarkable about Podemos than the poll results, which can merely be volatile snapshots of the moment, is the social mobilization that the organization set in motion. 900 Podemos base groups, so called circles, have formed throughout the whole country. Almost 10,000 people took part in the party's founding congress in October. And in municipal district assemblies hundreds of neighbours discuss the crisis, capitalism, and ‘real democracy’ -- and in this case ‘neighbours’ means literally neighbours. Podemos has left the subcultural milieus behind.
The level of debate is astounding, determined as it is, on the one hand, by a pragmatism directed at the 2015 elections and, on the other, by sharp criticism of neoliberalism and bourgeois political routine.
