New parties and matryoshka scissions in Spain. The case of Podemos and Más Madrid

Abstract

The economic crisis which began in 2008, and was further exacerbated by the political-institutional crisis of 2011–2014, has led to a transformation in the traditional Spanish party system. Instead of an imperfect bipartisan system, it has moved to a moderate multiparty one with two practically sealed ideological blocs, of similar weight and with intra-bloc mobility. However, in each bloc the dominance of the traditional party has been maintained (PSOE-social democrats and PP-conservatives) but sharing the space, in order to govern, with new agents of recent creation: Podemos-left, Ciudadanos-liberals and VOX-extreme right. The political-institutional crisis prompted a new complexity in the partisan system with the entry into Parliament of new actors but without the departure of any relevant party, resulting in a dramatic increase in the fragmentation and polarization of the Spanish party system. In this article we focus on the competition within the left bloc, in particular, the division of Podemos in the Community of Madrid to form the political party Más Madrid. We analyse the power fight, competition and electoral transfer between both parties during the 2019 local, regional and national elections and show that for the first time a dual vote has been established in the Community of Madrid. An anomaly in Spanish territories where no historical nationalities coexist. Our results also show that the left-left space has not expanded with the shift of social democrats to the ideological center. The paper concludes asking about whether this electoral flight could spread to parties with similar political stances in the different Spanish territories.