A Populist Experiment in Spanish Political Culture? On the Cultural Politics of Podemos

Abstract

The goal of this essay is to explain Podemos's 2014 emergence in Spanish politics in terms of its contributions to a possible long-term shift in Spanish political culture. For doing that, the essay focuses not so much on the party's electoral ups and downs but on a series of main discursive lines and elements of the party's trajectory that help explain its relevance in the context of recent Spanish political and cultural history: the crisis of middle classes; the plebeian as political subject linked to an alliance between precarized middle classes and precarious working classes; plurinationality and the Spanish territorial debates; historical memory and Spanish Republicanism; and popular sovereignty.