Corroded by internal divisions, in freefall in the polls, Spain’s left-wing Podemos faction is in deep crisis just months before European elections seen as decisive for its future, ten years after it was founded.

Swan song after glory? Born out of the Outraged Against Austerity movement, the party was founded in 2014 with the promise of upending the political chessboard. Today it is fighting for its survival against rival Sumar, the leftist platform of Labor Minister Yolanda Dias.

“The last few months have not been easy,” party leader Ione Bellara admitted in a video posted on the party’s tenth anniversary. “Podemos is at a critical moment,” said the movement’s co-founder Juan Carlos Monedero in a more serious tone.

Podemos has five MPs, who were elected in July as part of an agreement with Sumar. But he no longer holds a ministerial role in Pedro Sanchez’s government and suffers isolation after quitting Sumar’s parliamentary group following a clash with Yolanda Díaz.

According to the latest barometer of the CIS institute, the intention to vote for Podemos stands at 2.7%. The party is in decline and risks “becoming insignificant, invisible”, finds Paloma Roman, a political scientist at the Complutense University of Madrid.

Absence of self-criticism

Everything started well for Podemos, founded on January 17, 2014 by some Political Science professors, among them Pablo Iglesias, a charismatic but divisive figure in the faction until his retirement from political life in 2021.

Five months after its creation, the party managed to secure five seats in the European elections. His spectacular rise was confirmed in the parliamentary elections at the end of 2015 which gave him 69 seats in the Spanish Parliament ending bipartisanship in Spain.

The party “grew very quickly” and became “the third political force”, enough to convince Pedro Sánchez in 2020 to allow five of its members to enter the government, recalls Paloma Roman.

Participating in this governing coalition allowed Podemos to pass several popular measures through parliament, such as a large increase in the minimum wage, labor market reform and an increase in paternity leave. But it fueled criticism and hastened his descent.

But what is the reason for this decline in popularity? Podemos lays the blame on “continuous attacks by the political and judicial power and the power of the media”. But this line of defense suffers from a lack of self-criticism, according to many political observers, who place the blame on party officials.

Although Podemos became the subject of a “dirty war” with the formulation of false accusations against members of its leadership by former police officers, it suffered from a lack of “internal democracy”, according to Juan Carlos Monedero. Paloma Roman also agrees with this finding, who considers that the movement “made mistakes”.

Chief among them is the 2023 sexual violence law of former Equality Minister Irene Montero, partner of Pablo Iglesias, which resulted in the sentences of hundreds of rape convicts being commuted due to a legal flaw.

Destruction

This episode had disastrous results, because when the problem was identified, Podemos did not admit its mistake and did not back down, emphasizes Paloma Roman.

According to the university, this attitude hastened the departures and prompted Yolanda Díaz – a close associate of Pablo Iglesias and his political heir – to create the Sumar movement, Pedro Sánchez’s partner in the new government, with which Podemos is now at odds war.

In early January, Podemos’ five MPs blocked the approval of a decree aimed at improving unemployment benefits – a decision the party said was due to a technical dispute over the content of the regulation. However, it was collected as a vindictive move against Yolanda Dias, who was the initiator of the decree.

The party chose to present lists independent of Sumar in the local elections in Galicia in mid-February and in the European elections in June, risking its disappearance, like the center-right movement Ciudadanos, which was born like Podemos as a citizens’ movement and collapsed in the last Parliamentary Elections.