Pablo Iglesias with new mayor of Madrid,Ahora Madrid candidate Manuela Carmen. Demotix/ Jose Hinojosa. All rights reserved.A reader of the international press could be forgiven for thinking the May 24 local and regional elections in Spain were an outstanding success for Podemos, the new hope of the southern European left.
The minority victory of the Podemos-backed civic lists in Barcelona and the near-win in Madrid were directly attributed to the new party, together with good results in other cities, and in regional elections. The soon-to-be new mayors of Spain’s largest cities, anti-evictions activist Ada Colau in Barcelona and retired human rights judge Manuela Carmena in Madrid, shared the space with the victory celebrations of Pablo Iglesias, Podemos’s iconic leader, and the party’s chief ideologist, Íñigo Errejón.
And yet, an outright victory for the 17 months-old purple party, this was not.
