In the wake of two general elections in 2019, and the formation’s growing exhaustion, the prospect of entering coalition had been viewed by Unidas Podemos as offering the left-wing alliance a renewed focus after a period of vicious factionalism, as well as a way of avoiding the type of implosion the Corbyn project has undergone in Britain. The Left’s disastrous result in Madrid in large part reflects a growing sense of frustration with the PSOE-Unidas Podemos government, with the coalition parties only able to point to a rather limited set of advances up to this point. Yet Iglesias was also the driving force behind his formation’s strategic wager to enter office as a junior partner to PSOE, a party which is ostensibly social democratic, but deeply embedded within the circuits of Spain’s neoliberal regime. Coming after years of constant media attacks, numerous politically-motivated police investigations, as well as prolonged factional infighting, a toll had clearly been taken on Iglesias and his family’s security and wellbeing besides his personal popularity. This was followed a week later with a petrol bomb attack on Podemos’ headquarters in the southern region of Murcia – while, in the final stretch of the campaign, Iglesias received death threats accompanied by army brand bullets. Only hours after standing down as deputy prime minister, Iglesias found himself eye-balling a group of five neo-Nazi skinheads in a dramatic confrontation outside a Podemos event.
#Pablo iglesias series
It has been dominated by a series of far-right provocations, coming not only from the extremist Vox, but also from Spain’s growing neo-fascist street movement. Indeed, the political terrain that had not long ago been so hospitable to a then-insurgent Podemos appeared increasingly distant during this Madrid campaign. But, as with left-populist projects built elsewhere over the last decade, the project could not maintain its initial momentum after the gradual ebbing of the waves of anti-austerity protests that had coursed through the country in the wake of the financial crisis. One of the most talented left-wing leaders of his generation, unrivalled in his communicative abilities, he had led Podemos in its historic 2015 election campaign, in which the party came so close to its sorpasso of PSOE. With Iglesias’ dramatic announcement coming just a few days before the tenth anniversary of the 15-M movement, his resignation also marks the end of a chapter in Spanish and European politics. The Right was highly mobilised, with the Popular Party’s (PP) Trumpian candidate Isabel Díaz Ayuso just falling short of an absolute majority, which will now allow her to govern alone with Vox’s external support. His campaign run improved Unidas Podemos’ standing slightly on its 2019 result-securing just over seven percent of the vote and ten seats-while PSOE suffered its worst ever outcome in the capital to the benefit, it seemed, of the Más Madrid party set up during a Podemos split in 2019.
‘These results make it clear that at present I’m not a figure who can help the party make gains and contribute towards it consolidating its institutional weight,’ as he put it. Yet as the final votes were counted last night, it was already obvious that Iglesias’ candidacy had become exhausted after several intense electoral cycles, among other factors. In a bombshell video released on social media, he explained he was doing so in order to lead his party’s regional force in snap Madrid elections held yesterday – with the hope his presence in the campaign would reverse Unidas Podemos’ declining fortunes in the polls. In early March, he stunned Spanish political circles by announcing he was standing down as the country’s deputy prime minister, only fourteen months after Unidas Podemos had entered coalition with the centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE). ‘When your role within your organisation and your task to improve democracy in this country becomes greatly limited and mobilises the worst elements of those who hate it, certain decisions have to be taken without hesitation.’ These were the words of Podemos co-founder Pablo Iglesias as he announced his shock decision to step back with immediate effect not only from the formation he had led for seven years prior to last night – but from frontline politics altogether.
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