real utopias

Leftwing Podemos praises Greek Syriza party but talks up differences between the two eurozone countries to calm voters’ fears of economic contagion

In Spain, the government’s economic austerity policies have contributed to an unemployment rate of 23 percent, mass home foreclosures and evictions and a deep distrust of an entrenched political class. It has also inspired the rise of a new generation of leftist politicians who are shaking up Spain’s political landscape.

Rarely has a political party become so popular so quickly. Driven by the economic and political crisis gripping Spain, Podemos (“we can” in English), the country’s anti-austerity leftist party, is ...

Spain: Can Citizens save the right?
Green Left Weekly
However, in March, with greater speed than even Podemos had shown after winning five seats in last year's May European elections, a new political force has burst onto the national political stage.

Image: Guanyem initiative in Barcelona. [Photo by David Samaranch and Cristina Mañas.] Even if one almost always goes wrong with such prognoses, the fact is that the Spanish state is facing the big...

Perhaps clowns aren't the most obvious warriors for social justice, but the canivalesque has always been part of public folk culture.

The long read: Just 15 months after it was founded, Podemos now leads the polls in Spain. Can this grassroots party win power – or is its bubble about to burst?

Never before has it become so clear that we live in societies that are politically
democratic but socially fascist.

Watch a recent address by Spain’s Podemos Secretary General Pablo Iglesias, a political science professor and activist who could become the country’s next prime minister if his anti-austerity party wins the national elections later this year.

Politics is now operating at "three speeds". Can our establishment parties keep up?

Truly radical change will only come when radical parties accept that they need to give power back to the people - not as a slogan but as a democratic process.

With Greece possibly facing new elections in January and the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) still firmly in the lead, and with the leftist upstart Podemos now polling first in Spain, where elections are scheduled for later next year, the...

Podemos is the end result of a learning process originated in the South and which eventually made it possible to creatively channel the outrage that ran through the streets of Spain.

EUROPEAN politics are in turmoil. Far-right and anti-EU parties are making impressive gains across the continent as a discontented populace demands new brooms to sweep away self-serving ‘establishment’ parties.