Podemos, from 15-M to war with adding through its five assemblies | Spain

We can celebrate this weekend the V Citizen State Assemblyan initiative that has been held since 2014, when its journey in Spanish politics began. In all of the above, the bases have chosen the leadership and strategies that training would follow in the following years. This fifth edition is developed in the context of a left fragmented by the schism between Podemos and add and with The launch of Irene MonteroExistra de Equality, as a party candidate in the next general elections.

The story of Podemos has been marked by each of its congresses, with the deep wound that left the confrontation with Íñigo Errejón, which led to the formation in two at the beginning of 2017. This information reviews the context and the results of all the previous conclaves.

2014 | Vistalegre I: « Yes you can »

Just three months after its foundation, we can achieve five Eurodiputs in the elections to the European Parliament of May 2014. More than one million people trusted the project, auged by social discontent fruit of the economic crisis and some civil organizations, such as movement 15-M. After those elections, 86% of the bases decided that Pablo Iglesias, the one who was head of list in the campaign, led the game to its first assembly, which was going to be held in autumn.

On October 18 and 19, 2014, more than 7,000 people gathered at the Vistalegre Palace in Madrid to decide whether the future of Podemos would be in the hands of the Churches team or the critical sector headed by Pablo Echenique. 112,000 people voted the party model that should be structured for the 2015 elections. Voting were telematic, through a platform called Agora Voting, a software They would continue to use in later assemblies. Echenique withdrew his candidacy when considering that the voting method chosen annulled all kinds of competition. Iglesias and his close team made up of professors of the Complutense (Íñigo Errejón, Juan Carlos Monedero, Luis Alegre and Carolina Bescansa) achieved the support of 80% of the militants. They decided that they would not attend the following municipal elections as their own brand for the heterogeneity of related groups in the territorial scope. On the other hand, they marked their goal to compete face to face with the PP of Mariano Rajoy, in the government at that time, and the PSOE of Pedro Sánchez.

Can He left Vistalegre I as a compact political bloc. There it was decided how the party was going to be configured in the following years: centralized structure, general secretary and a dome to guarantee internal unit. A few weeks later, they held primaries to choose the Secretary General who was going to lead the training for the regional and general elections of 2015. Again, Pablo Iglesias obtained the support of the vast majority of the supporters of the training and was appointed among choirs of « Yes you can » and the goal of winning the general elections.

2017 | Vistalegre II: The fracture of the party

Can He arrived at his second assembly with 71 deputies in Congress After signing a political coalition with IU: Unidos Podemos. The political map went to a moment of enormous instability. Rajoy did not get a majority in 2015, which caused electoral repetition, in which the PSOE refrained to give the presidency of the government to the PP.

The dismissal of what was the Secretary of Organization, Sergio Pascual, a year earlier, fueled the tensions between the leader and Íñigo Errejón. But the division between the two leaders also responded to a strategic issue, which confronted two different ways of facing the future of Podemos. Iglesias opted to keep the game more to the left, while Errejón advocated creating consensus with other formations.

The second assembly was convened to rebuild the fracture between the two leaders. Both played their future: Iglesias promised that, if he lost, he would leave politics, while Errejón said he would not take the position, even if he won.

283,175 people were called to vote. The thesis of the Pablists were imposed. Irene Montero became the new parliamentary spokeswoman and number two. Errejón was dismissed from his post in Congress and joined Manuela Carmena to create the most Madrid platform and lead the candidacy of the Community of Madrid for the 2019 elections and In the photo of Vistalegre II there were already missing purse, Alegre and Bescansa, three of the five leaders who appeared in the first assembly. There the future schism of Podemos was forged.

2020 | Vistalegre III: Telematics Assembly

We can reaped its worst result so far in the general elections of November 10, 2019: 35 deputies. After the investiture to Pedro Sánchez in January 2020Pablo Iglesias convened another assembly for March of that year. Pandemic confinement forced the appointment to be delayed until May. Congress was limited to telematic debates and the publication of the results of the voting, which revalidated the leadership of churches.

This assembly was held away from the fireworks of the previous two. The anti -capitalist section, which still had strength in the party, abandoned the formation in February, suspicious of the Government Pact with the PSOE. There was no discordant voice with enough force to impose Pablo Iglesias. He obtained 53,167 votes of the 59,201 registered, more than 92% of the support. The only candidate who achieved the necessary guarantees to face him, Fernando Barredo, barely had support: he added 4,503 votes.

Can ended with some guidelines that he had maintained since its foundation and reorganized as a traditional cutting match. Some of the measures taken after Vistalegre III were to eliminate the limitation of 12 years of mandates, modify the salary roof of their public positions or differentiate between registered and militants « AT current payment ». Party sources declared to El País that the objective of celebrating this assembly was not shielding Iglesias, but « tie » Irene Montero as her successor.

2021 | Vistalegre IV: The post churches era

Pablo Iglesias left the leadership of Podemos and his position as Vice President of the Government and Minister of Social Rights in 2021 to face Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the elections of that year for the Community of Madrid. He got 10 seats, a minor result than expected initially and also far from more Madrid, the split founded by Carmena and Errejón, which managed to position itself as the main opposition party in the capital. After the electoral batacazo, Iglesias left politics.

Without what had been the leader of Podemos since its foundation, the new general secretary, Ione Belarra, faced the challenge of « leaving behind », as she said in her speech after being elected, the marking leadership of Pablo Iglesias. He inherited the Social Rights portfolio in the Council of Ministers and kept Irene Montero as number two In the new executive.

Yolanda Díaz, Minister of Labor, was appointed by Churches Vice President Second of the Government and her successor to be in charge of a candidacy of Unidas Podemos in the following general elections. But Díaz’s plans, after years of electoral decline, were others.

The new direction opted to reinforce the feminist character of the party and reinforce training in the territories, a strategy that was demonstrated in the elections of May 2023, which worsened results.