The end of bipartidism: where Spanish politics get interesting

 Podemos: the party born on 15M

As we saw in the previous post, the Spanish crisis created a mix of situations that lead to the movement called 15M. This movement was created by anonymous organizations that wanted to change the country from the basis. The peaceful demonstrations were a complete success with a participation and duration much higher than expected. But, as we have said, the situation of the working class didn’t change very much with the new party.

After the movement ended, a new party was born to give voice in the Parliament to all those people that protested on the 15M and that were still outraged. Podemos (translated “we can”) occupied the left side of the Spanish political spectrum. This extremist and populist party was born to defend the humble workers against the ‘breed’, the name that this party gave to the rich and ‘privilege’ people such as bankers, businessmen, politics, etc.

The surprise was when on May 2014, Podemos (founded just two months earlier) won five seats in the elections for the European Parliament. This result gave the new party a huge impulse for the 2015 elections.

The fourth party in the match

Politics is just like business (that’s why I love so much both), whenever there is a demand and a lack of supply or a group of customers are dissatisfied with a service, a new company appears to cover that whole in the market. As Podemos did with the outraged people, there was a big group of people that were unhappy with PP and PSOE (the old parties) but had more liberal thoughts than the new extremist party. That is the point when Ciudadanos (“citizens” in English) came to scene.

Ciudadanos was born to collect all the center-right votes that didn’t want to vote PP because of the measures that took during its mandate and, also, because PP was being accused of many cases of corruption.

As Podemos did, Ciudadanos also was a surprise (smaller, but a surprise) in the European elections, obtaining two seats.

From a tennis match to the ‘hunger games’

During the bipartidism, elections were boring and predictable. If people were happy with the government, it would get a better result in the next elections; if not, the other party would easily win. Just as a tennis match, if your rival did a bad game, you were going to win, and backwards. But with Podemos and Ciudadanos everything had changed, now the fact that your rival lost seats didn’t mean that you were going to get them: the tennis match was over and the ‘hunger games’ had begun.

As expected, the new parties got a historical result (69 seats for Podemos and 40 for Ciudadanos), but this result was not enough to overcome the old parties (123 seats for PP and 90 for PSOE). The elections were done but the show was not over: the parties had to agree which party (or coalition) was going to govern the country. But that will be explained on our next post.

1. Nice blog! I think you didn’t have to explain so back in time but for the rest it was really…

2. Me encanta la idea de hacer un blog sobre la situación política actual española, es muy interesante. No hay excusa,…

3. I liked the blog, very useful and well done.

4. Amazing photos!! Thanks, it’s very interesting!!!