BERNARDO GUTIÉRREZ GONZÁLEZ - The 'Podemos wave' as a global hope
Historic. Imagine a world where elections are more than a choice between one or the other. Congratulations, Spain! (Tweet from Edward Snowden)
Podemos’ bursting
into Spain’s parliament is a breath of fresh air for the Left, and for the
global movements seeking to replicate the Spanish political phenomenon.
Edward Snowden’s congratulatory tweet on December, 20 was
posted at 9.40 pm, when the election results, giving the new party 18% of the
seats in parliament, were almost final. Snowden, a true new millennium star,
added a link to one piece from The Guardian, which highlighted the emergence of
Podemos and the end of the two-party system in Spain.
He was not the only one. Nor was he the first. Ever since
the surprise results of Podemos at the May 2014 European elections, praise and
support for Podemos have been coming in from all over the world. Not only that:
in some European and American countries there are people busy trying to
replicate the experience of Podemos in a variety of ways. While the Spanish caverna
mediática (the powerful rightwing media apparatus) lambasts Pablo
Iglesias’s party, Podemos keeps drawing increasing international attention.
Pepe Mujica, the admired former president of Uruguay, said a
few months ago that Podemos is "a warning roar in the contemporary
world". Eduardo Galeano identified Podemos with empowerment:
"Podemos, you are the enemies of impotence". Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva, former president of Brazil, wished Pablo Iglesias’s party success at the
December 20 general elections and avoided doing the same with his traditional
ally, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español -
PSOE). Declarations of love have been coming in from Europe too. Filmmaker Ken
Loach declared that Podemos "should be the banner of the European
Left". And Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and a new era icon,
stated that Podemos is the "first party of the 21st century".
But fascination with Spanish political developments after
the 15M outbreak goes beyond Podemos. The “municipalist” confluences – that is,
the citizen fronts that include Podemos - which conquered the main cities in
Spain at the last local elections, is a phenomenon that has also had a deep
global impact. Ada Colau and Manuela Carmena, the current mayoresses of
Barcelona and Madrid, are being pronounced as true heroines of change. And
different cities around the world are studying the methods, technology and
narrative of Spanish municipalism.
However, despite the impressive score at the recent general
elections – Podemos is now the third party in Spain and the first party,
through ad-hoc configurations, in Catalonia and the Basque Country – the
Spanish political and media system tries hard to de-legitimize anything that
has to do with Podemos, including Manuela Carmena’s and Ada Colau’s governments
in Madrid and Barcelona. What is it exactly that so frightens the Spanish
establishment? Why does the Spanish Left, especially Izquierda Unida (United
Left), shun the rise of Pablo Iglesias? Why does all that hovers around Podemos
inspire citizens, intellectuals, politicians and movements around the globe?
A new Left for Europe
The perception of Podemos in Europe and Latin America, which
is where the party is mostly talked about, is substantially different. Europe
is fascinated with the energy, optimism and popularity of Podemos. It sees its
network and street-level participatory framework as a shot of inspiration for
the birthing of a new continental Left poised to change the European Union
neoliberal course. British political scientist Owen Jones, possibly the
greatest defender of Pablo Iglesias’s party, in an article titled What
I learned from Podemos, offers a comprehensive review of what Europe can
learn from the new Spanish party. Highlighting the importance of the Spanish
social ecosystem, the 15M movement and some other movements such as the
Mortgage-Affected Citizen Platform (Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca -
PAH),
Owen singles out what, to his view, is the most important contribution of
Podemos: the giving up of the methods and symbols of the old Left. "The
colour of Podemos is purple, not red. It is hard to find words like Socialism
in its leaders’ speeches. Podemos even refuses the Left-versus-Right
terminology, choosing instead “People-versus-Elite”". Owen Jones
emphasizes Podemos’s "enthusiasm" and "bright optimism".
Most European observers, in addition to considering Podemos
a driver for the renewal of the Left, also highlight its democratizing
potential. Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics, notes
that "Podemos carries hope for the democratizing of the Eurozone”. British
author Paul Mason (PostCapitalism: a Guide to our Future) considers, in
a recent article, that the Spanish cities governed by confluences, especially
Manuela Carmena’s Madrid, are the great hope for building a new city model based
on collective intelligence and citizen collaboration.
Renaud Lambert, the editor of Le Monde Diplomatique,
wrote an article in early 2015 in which he asserted that Podemos is "the
party that is changing Spain", for it is "translating the Left’s
traditional discourse into discursive coordinates which can gather an increased
popular base: democracy, sovereignty and social rights ". The leftist
German weekly Der Freitag devoted its April front cover to
Podemos with the following headline: "Why the Podemos movement can change
Europe".
On the other hand, European media usually associate Podemos
with the Greek coalition Syriza and the anti austerity policies that are being
demanded in Southern Europe. But in recent times, even Financial Times
columnists such as Wolfgang Münchau have been siding with the purple party’s
economic prescriptions on debt restructuring. Generally, the Left and the
European intelligentsia regard Podemos as the best recipe to put an end to the
"extreme centre" – a metaphor used by Tariq Ali to describe the
Labour and Socialist parties that have turned themselves in to neoliberalism,
austerity and the EU’s mother-ship.
The Americas
In February 2015, Pablo Iglesias made a strategic US tour.
He met with renowned economists Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel Prize in Economics in
2001) and Mark Weisbrot, co-founder of the influential Centre for Economic and
Policy Research (CEPR), who was full of praise for Pablo Iglesias. The leader
of Podemos also spoke with social movements and a number of key intellectuals
of the American Left. His appearance on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now talk
show, an emblem of the American Left, was especially important.
The dialogue
between Iglesias and Goodman at the University of New York, organized by the
prestigious Left Forum, had a spectacular attendance. And some influential
critical thinkers, notably Noam Chomsky, have repeatedly emphasized the
importance of the new Spanish party: "Podemos is a party which stands up
against the neoliberal assault that is strangling and destroying the peripheral
countries in Europe." For her part, French-American author Susan George
claims that Podemos "has the correct stance on climate change and TTIP
(the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the United States
and the European Union ,currently under negotiation).
Latin America has a special relationship with Podemos. The
fact that Podemos is embracing some of the political theories of Argentinean
theorist Ernesto Laclau, such as the "hegemony" concept or the
"construction of a people", raises some concern in a region where the
progressive bloc’s narrative is on the decline. However, a good part of the
Left and the Latin American movements feel that Podemos’ strong winds can
become a renewing hurricane, especially in terms of building a new narrative.
In Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador has founded a new
party, the National Regeneration Movement (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional –
MORENA), a self-proclaimed "Mexican Podemos" that is experimenting
with the party-movement formula. In Brazil, where the Spanish 15M social
effervescence has had a large impact, Podemos arouses passions. Late in 2014,
some dissidents from the Rede Sustentabilidade launched the Raíz
Movimento Cidadanista (Root Citizen Movement), which has been hailed
by the media as “Brazil’s Podemos”. The Circulos de Cidadania (Citizen
Circles) in Rio de Janeiro were also activated mirroring the Podemos’s circles,
and aim at reinventing political participation and the people’s storytelling.
The interest in Brazil runs so high that a top selling book this year was Podemos
e Syriza: experimentações políticas e democracia no século 21 (Podemos
and Syriza: political experiments and democracy in the 21st century). The last
third of the book is devoted to the municipalist confluences
governing the some of the main cities in Spain, including Madrid and Barcelona.
And here is a clue: the emergence of Podemos has generated
an influence and an asymmetrical, organic and symbolic inspiration that exceeds
the party itself. In Brazil, Ahora Madrid or Barcelona en
Comú (Carmena’s and Colau’s confluences) have been as influential as
Podemos itself, if not more. In Belo Horizonte, one of Brazil’s main cities, a
local confluence is currently under construction: Muitxos: Cidade que Queremos
(Many: the City We Want) following the steps of the Spanish municipalist model.
In Mexico, theWikipolítica movement that has managed to get the
first Mexican independent congressman elected, Pedro Kumamoto, clearly echoes
the Spanish municipalist conception.
While the Spanish powerful rightwing media apparatus, the
Old Left (Izquierda Unida) and the extreme centre (PSOE) criticize
Podemos’s phenomenon, there is a planetary echo that feeds on its energy, its
practices and its narrative outstripping the classic revolutionary symbolism.
There have been some issues concerning the internal democracy of Podemos, which
are the main object of criticism levelled by Spanish social movements, but it
could be said that the purple party is becoming a watershed in global politics.
Portuguese philosopher Boaventura de Sousa Santos talks
about the Podemos Wave. In a March 2015 article, he stressed that Podemos is
not a Southern European or Latin American phenomenon. Quoting the Indian Aam
Aadmi Party (Party of the Common Man), Boaventura de Sousa Santos
predicts that what he calls the Podemos Wave "can emerge
under different features on another continent or context." In fact,
Podemos’ significant burst into the Spanish parliament during the past general
elections has been praised by several emerging parties worldwide. For example,
the Turkish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HPD), born after the Gezi Park riots in
Istanbul, celebrated via Twitter the end of the Spanish two-party system.
The Podemos Wave, whatever may happen in
Spain, will continue. The Wave may expand and even generate some
improvements in the participatory methods so far implemented by the purple
party. Ultimately, it is a breath of fresh air for the world’s Left. The Podemos
Wave – according to Boaventura de Sousa Santos – "is a
metaphor of the quest for a political solution to the progressive impasse in
which we find ourselves, a solution that does not entail an abrupt political
breakdown".
