Viva Podemos: the left shows it can adapt and thrive in a crisis | Owen Jones | Comment is free | The Guardian
Spain is in a mess, with unemployment at almost 25%, and over half its young people without work,
a plight that can damage an individual for life. And in comparison with
Britain it has been transformed by immigration at lightning speed: in
the early 90s fewer than one in every hundred Spaniards were immigrants;
in the noughties, the number surged sixfold, from 924,000 immigrants officially registered in 2000 to 5.6 million in 2009.
Yet, despite rampant joblessness, poverty and insecurity, parties that
have prioritised clampdowns on immigrants have failed to thrive.
Instead, disaffection has found a different expression: a party whose
premise is that ordinary Spaniards should not have to pay for a crisis
they had nothing to do with.
Pablo Iglesias,
the Podemos secretary general (right) with Alexis Tsipras, the leader
of Greece's Syriza party, during a meeting in Madrid on 15 November.
Photograph: Juan Medina/Reuters
