New Left Populism in Contemporary Spain? the Upsurge of Podemos

Comparative studies on the transformations of European politics have stressed the opportunities that globalization opens for political actors opposing multiculturalism and/or European integration (Kriesi et al. 2008, Hooghe and Marks 2005).  Students of populism have also underscored the fact that European populist movements have tended to adopt ethnocentric and nationalist political platforms (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013). In Spain, however, despite the recent intensity of both economic crisis and party system change, no strong political movement embracing populist elements and nationalist and ethnocentric proposals arose at the national level. By contrast, in the 2014 European elections a very different kind of political actor, Podemos, managed to break into the national political arena. Podemos embraced several classical populist themes, such as the rejection of an elitist and oligarchic political class and the overcoming of long-standing sociopolitical cleavages. But in contrast to rightist populist platforms, Podemos adopted a redistributive socioeconomic political platform, and avoided any ethnocentric overtones in its discourse and appeals.  In our paper we will show the factors that paved the way for the emergence of a new and successful political actor adopting both a populist discourse and a redistributive economic platform.  We will trace the recent evolution of populist elements among Spanish political actors and their connection to the main dimensions of party competition. We will also trace the process through which populist appeals and attitudes took form and were politically activated at both the supply- and demand-side, and how they became intertwined with left-wing redistributive proposals.