Spain’s Podemos party on verge of split before Vistalegre II congress
By
Alex Lantier and Alejandro López
11 February 2017
In the weeks leading up to its Vistalegre II congress opening today in Madrid, an extraordinary crisis has erupted inside Spain’s Podemos party. The party that proclaimed itself an “electoral war machine” fighting for the people against a corrupt “caste” of pro-austerity Spanish politicians is now threatened with dissolution, by the admission of its leaders themselves, as they denounce each other as sell-outs and would-be dictators.
The university lecturers who occupy the party’s top two positions, General Secretary Pablo Iglesias and Political Secretary Íñigo Errejón, are engaged in a vicious faction fight. Gone is the time after Podemos’ foundation in 2014 when the two spoke of their collaboration—Iglesias praising the “rare intellectual complicity” uniting him with Errejón, while Errejón thanked Iglesias for teaching him how to practice “the art of war … methodically and with persistence.”
Significantly, none of the factions involved in the increasingly bitter fight inside Podemos can give a coherent accounting for their criticisms of their rivals inside the party. What is emerging very clearly, however, is the reactionary character of Podemos, which is moving sharply to the right.
Since December, as ever broader sections of Podemos backed Errejón or declined to sign common positions with Iglesias—including Podemos’ members in Spain’s second and third cities, Barcelona and Valencia—Iglesias has turned on his lieutenant. Ignoring the fact that he himself championed ties with the big-business Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), he is attacking Errejón’s factional manoeuvres and support for ties to the PSOE….