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I am not wasting my time with something that was thoroughly explained in the Spanish Wikipedia. The consensus there after long discussion is left-wing, take it or leave it. You're taking advantage of the fact that there's nobody editing this on English.
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| membership =
| ideology = <!-- Please do not add anything here unless you have reliable and independent sources. -->
| ideology = <!-- Please do not add anything here unless you have reliable and independent sources. -->
| position = [[Left-wing]] <!-- Please do not add "far-let" here. It is described by almost all reliable sources as left-wing. Please read the discussions on the Spanish Wikipedia before changing this. -->
| position = [[Far-left]]
| headquarters = c/ Zurita 21<br>28012 Madrid
| headquarters = c/ Zurita 21<br>28012 Madrid
| colours = [[Purple]]
| colours = [[Purple]]

Revision as of 05:53, 2 June 2014

Podemos
SpokespersonPablo Iglesias Turrión
Founded17 January 2014 (2014-01-17)
Headquartersc/ Zurita 21
28012 Madrid
Political positionLeft-wing
European Parliament groupEuropean United Left–Nordic Green Left
ColoursPurple
Local Government
0 / 68,230
Regional Parliaments
0 / 1,268
Congress of Deputies
0 / 350
Spanish Senate
0 / 266
European Parliament
5 / 54
Website
www.podemos.info

Podemos (meaning 'We can' in Spanish) is a Spanish political party created on 11 March 2014 by Spanish leftist activists associated with the 15-M movement that emerged from the 2011–12 Spanish protests.[1] Its defacto leader is Pablo Iglesias Turrión[1] (born Madrid, Spain, 17 October 1978) a writer, professor of Political Science at the Complutense University in Madrid and occasional Spanish television presenter for a regional political discussion program Fort Apache.[2]

Podemos together with some 26 other small emergent parties capitalised on significant discontent with the bipartisanship of the two main political parties: the People's Party and Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. Using the infrastructure of the so called indignados and social media networks Podemos generated significant interest throughout Spain. The party collected 50,000 supporting signatures within their first day, causing their website to crash due to traffic overload once the project was made public.

Pablo Iglesias cites the Greek Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) led by Alexis Tsipras as an inspiration.[3]

Podemos is organized through Circles,[4] which can be groups of both territorial and sectoral work.

Initial policies

Podemos issued an extensive (36-page) policy document[5] in which each of the 6 sections has the suffix Constructing Democracy.

EU elections 2014

On 25 May 2014 Podemos entered candidates for the 2014 European parliamentary elections, some of which were unemployed. In a surprise result, it polled 7.97% of the vote and thus was awarded five seats out of 54.[6][7]

Regarding the election Pablo Iglesias was described as pessimistic by El Pais: “We have lost these European elections. They have been won by the Popular Party. We cannot be happy about this." He stated that his objective is to "move forward until we throw the PP and the PSOE out of power."[8] "We will now work with other parties from the south of Europe to make it clear that we don’t want to be a German colony.”[8] Iglesias said Podemos MEPs would not take the standard MEP salary of more than €8,000 (£6,500) a month, stating that "not one of our MEPs will earn more than €1,930, an amount that's three times the minimum wage in Spain".[9]

Elected representatives

European Parliament

Election year Party European Parliament
# of
overall votes
% of
overall vote
# of
overall seats won
+/–
2014 PODEMOS 1,245,948 8.0 (#4)
5 / 54
New

References

  1. ^ a b Gutiérrez Calvo, Vera (27 May 2014). "Podemos: A party under construction". El Pais in English. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  2. ^ Pablo Iglesias Turrión. "Curriculum Vitae de Pablo Iglesias Turrión" (PDF) (in Spanish). Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  3. ^ Román, David (26 May 2014). "Can Spain's New Party Build on its EU Poll Success?". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  4. ^ a b Ríos, Pere (29 May 2014). ""Podemos is breathing new life into a decadent democracy"". El Pais in English. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  5. ^ Final Program Document (in Spanish)
  6. ^ Sky news:Spanish voters punish mainstream parties
  7. ^ BBC News Vote 2014
  8. ^ a b Gómez, Luis (26 May 2014). "The untamed ambition of Podemos, the surprise victor in Sunday's poll". El Pais in English. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  9. ^ Kassam, Ashifa (27 May 2014). "Podemos hopes to cement rise of citizen politics in Spain after election success". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  10. ^ Podemos Candidates