Why, to Date, There Was No Populism in Spain?

Notwithstanding the recent emergence of Podemos, a leftist populist movement that in the 2014 elections for the European Parliament polled almost eight percent of the Spanish vote, Spain has to date been one of the very few countries in Europe with no significant populist parties on display. Why? To provide a credible answer, this paper compares the “negative” case of contemporary Spain with a country replete with populism – contemporary Greece. Beginning with a most similar system design, it is shown why, and how, in the aftermath of their almost simultaneous transitions to democracy in the mid-1970s, populism grew strong in Greece but not in Spain, which remained steadfast to democratic liberalism. Thereafter, the comparative analysis of the cases follows a path-dependency approach that points directly to the specific mechanisms that may trigger (or prevent) populist emergence. It is shown that, while in power in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Spanish socialists chose to rule on the basis of liberal principles, namely, the acknowledgement of multiple divisions in society; a constant effort for political moderation and consensus-building; and their emphasis on right over the good. In contrast, the Greek socialists-turned-populist, also ruled for many years, but on the basis of the exactly opposite principles, thus becoming a classic case of populism. When the recent economic crisis hit the two countries, Spain was still a liberal democracy, albeit an embattled one, while Greece, in which populism had meantime contaminated all major political forces, had become a “populist democracy” (Pappas 2014).