The pace at which political activity tends to devour those who devote themselves to it is a subject on which there is less data than there should be. Although attention is often focused on those who occupy the most prominent positions, the fact that thousands of people dedicated to politics receive little attention contributes to not having a solid idea of the duration of a political career or its characteristics.
Rarely, however, events allow us to reflect on the subject to articulate a small research agenda. It happened in Spain in the last two and a half years within the leadership of three state formations that occupy the right, the center and the left of the political spectrum. , where it is not difficult to find similar cases.
These are three men born three years apart in Madrid, Barcelona and Palencia, with university studies in law and political science. Two of them entered professional politics at the same age of 26, and the third at 36, although their political activism in the field of communication and consultancy began to develop a decade earlier.
While two of them started their careers in the regional framework, the other did it in the European framework, they coincided in the Cortes, reached the leadership of their respective formations at a very similar age and also left politics between November 2019 and April 2022, none of them reached the age of 43 years.
In their personal lives they were parents, one of three children and two of two children. The exit from politics, for those who did not have a previous fixed job, allowed them to mobilize their accumulated political capital to return to their professional role in the field of communication and investigation or to work for less than two years in a law firm with few professional results.
Pablo Iglesias Turrión (Madrid, 1978), founder and leader of Podemos, is a lawyer and political scientist with a doctorate. He was a professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid between 2003 and 2014, working simultaneously with communication (TV and press) and consultancy. He was an MEP for one year starting in 2014, when he formally entered the political arena, and a member of the Spanish parliament between 2015 and 2021. He left politics in May of last year after obtaining unsatisfactory electoral results in the Madrid regional elections in which he had candidate, resigning from one of the vice-presidencies of the Spanish government.
Albert Rivera (Barcelona, 1979), founder and leader of Ciudadanos. He is a lawyer and worked at a financial institution (La Caixa) between 2002 and 2006. He was a member of the Parliament of Catalonia between 2006 and 2015 and in the Cortes between 2015 and 2019. He left politics in November this year after the electoral failure of his party.
Pablo Casado (Palencia, 1981) is a lawyer and was a deputy in the Madrid Assembly between 2007 and 2009. He held a position of trust between 2009 and 2011 and was a deputy in the Cortes from 2011 to 2022. He was national leader of the Popular Party for 32 months and left politics in April 2022 as a result of an internal crisis in his party.
Three characters who, after an average political career of fifteen years, lost the remarkable influence they enjoyed in a stage of Spanish politics that began with the 2007 financial crisis. The political professionalization of the three was a direct consequence of the crisis. and their careers culminated in the turmoil unleashed by the pandemic. Other Latin American countries may show not very different scenarios.
Thus, it is possible that Chile finds itself today on a similar path, as a result of the political renewal registered in the country after the last elections at the end of 2021, with which, to a certain extent, a process started ten years earlier was culminating. The change took place in different ideological spheres of the political spectrum, but if we look at the governmental sphere, Camila Vallejo, the current secretary general of the government about to turn 34, offers interesting clues.
In some recent statements made to the newspaper La Tercera, with respect to the generational group in which it is integrated, the policy stressed that “one of the most important things we have, as a political experience, is that we were trained in student street struggle.”
In an opposite ideological dimension, in neighboring Argentina, Javier Milei, a provocative economist, communicator and analyst, raises his messianic voice from the National Congress for which he was elected deputy in 2021 and prepares his individual attack on the Casa Rosada for 2023. it has more baggage than its feverish libertarian creed, the confrontation with the caste in power and the search for electoral harmony in a country hard hit by its bad economic situation and its desperate climate of social inequality.
Leaders at the mercy of the conjuncture, fortune and the liquid era in which they are inserted.
