Pablo Iglesias announced Tuesday evening May 4 to retire from political life after the triumph of the right to the regional in Madrid. The leader of Podemos wanted to revolutionize the left in a Spain plunged into austerity.
Long hair tied in a ponytail or bun, this 42-year-old former political science professor has been one of the main faces of Spanish politics since the creation in 2014 of the radical left-wing party Podemos, heir to the “Outraged” and the massive anti-austerity protests of 2011.
Entering the government in January 2020 as second vice-president of the government led by socialist Pedro Sánchez, Iglesias caught everyone by surprise in March by resigning to run in the regional elections in Madrid, in a bid to save Podemos from a rout in one of its strongholds. But he lost his bet.
“When you stop being useful, you have to know how to withdraw”
Despite his participation in the regional elections in Madrid, the left-wing parties failed to beat the right, which has been in power in the region for twenty-six years. A setback that signaled the end of the political career of Iglesias, who had already planned to pass the baton at the head of Podemos to the Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz.
“When you stop being useful, you have to know how to withdraw”, he admitted as Podemos came very far behind Mas Madrid, a rival formation to the left of the left. “We failed”, he lamented in front of a group of activists from his party. “I think it is obvious that today (…) I do not help to collect “, continued Mr. Iglesias. For this reason, “I give up all my functions, I leave politics in the sense of partisan politics, institutional politics”, so as not to be “An obstacle to a renewal of the direction which must occur in our political force”.
A precocious activist
Politics has always flowed in the veins of Pablo Iglesias, born in Madrid on October 17, 1978 and so named by his parents in honor of another Pablo Iglesias, founder in the XIXe century of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). Son of a lawyer and a labor inspector imprisoned during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), he joined the Communist Youth from the age of 14.
This early activism led him to take an interest in alter-globalization movements and new forms of socialism emerging in Latin America. Over a brilliant academic career, Pablo Iglesias obtained a law degree, a master’s degree in communication and a doctorate in political science. A teacher at the Complutense University of Madrid, he met those who would become the founding team of Podemos.
Fist raised and chanting “Sí se puede” (” Yes we can “), Iglesias and his comrades from Podemos entered the European Parliament in 2014 and ended in 2015 with the liberals of Ciudadanos the Spanish socialist / conservative bipartisanship.
The third Spanish political force
Furiously denouncing the austerity and corruption of “Caste” political and economic, Podemos, whose deputies decide in the hushed atmosphere of the Cortes because of their look, then becomes the third Spanish political force. Dreaming of overtaking the socialists to represent the alternative on the left, Podemos fails.
But Pablo Iglesias ended up agreeing with his enemy brother to overthrow the conservative Mariano Rajoy in 2018 and last year with the Socialists to form the country’s first coalition government since the end of the Franco dictatorship. In government, Iglesias had made the blocking of rents or the repeal of a reform of the Tory labor market his main workhorses.
Charismatic, Pablo Iglesias, who excels in televised debates, has been the soul of the team from the start, to the point that his face and ponytail were on the ballots for the 2014 Europeans.
A controversial leader
This “hyperleadership” quickly generated splits within the party, which he led with his companion, the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, as his right-hand man. With her, Pablo Iglesias, who boasted of having grown up in the modest working-class neighborhood of Vallecas in Madrid, bought a villa with swimming pool for more than 600,000 euros in the suburbs of the capital, where they live with their three children, which caused a stir within the party.
Passionate and sincere for his supporters, demagogue for his detractors, mainly within the Spanish right, which criticizes his links with Venezuela, he has long been compared to Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Greek radical left, who ruled from 2015 to 2019 by criticizing Brussels’ budgetary austerity.