Unidos Podemos: Errejon, Bustinduy, Iglesias, Montero, Garzon, Mayoral, Bescansa after the results of Spain's national elections in June, 2016.Jimenez Rodrigo/Press Association. All rights reserved.Following decades of social mobilization throughout the 1990s and 2000s premised on the idea of “changing the world without taking power”, through building progressive alliances in autonomous spaces, at a distance from the state, the emergence of 15-M in spring of 2011 placed the unique character of the post-Franco ‘78 regime firmly on the table.
This movement brought to a popular and global consciousness not only the deep and damaging social effects of the economic crisis in Spain, but a considerable political and regime crisis. Both mainstream political parties (PP and PSOE) and the entire political class were duly charged with a complete inability to represent the people so mobilised (No nos representan). In this way 15-M had the dramatic effect of reconnecting the question of institutional change with social transformation. It aroused the desire to make institutions work in the interest of a social majority.
The emergence of Podemos in January 2014, and its surprising success in the 25 May European elections, were seen as the long-awaited arrival of a project committed to channelling the transformative spirit of 15-M into the institutional arena. Podemos’ European elections program combined anti-austerity proposals with a critique of “bipartisanship” to produce one of the most ambitious political programs it had formulated. The unexpected electoral success and freshness of the message generated a wave of optimism that culminated that summer with the creation of nearly 1,000 local and sectorial assemblies (circulos) across Spain. This early phase was characterized by a lack of formal representation, a horizontality and decentralization, which saw the assemblies (some naturally developed out of the neighborhood assemblies that came out of 15-M) functioning completely autonomously.
