When Podemos was founded in 2014, the party was very much centred around Pablo’s leadership. He was capable not only of articulating people’s indignation at the economic injustices arising from the 2008 financial crisis, but also of tapping into their anger towards an unrepresentative two-party political system. He led Podemos for seven and half years, initially with the promise of taking advantage of this legitimacy crisis in the political system so as to win government power in ‘one leap’. This was during the party’s first electoral cycle in 2015/16. Then, as the system re-stabilised and the established parties regained ground, he sought to force a progressive coalition with the centre-left Socialist Party.

Yet while having become deputy prime minister in January 2020, he was also very aware that his broader appeal had been eroded over time. The constant vilification in the press had taken its toll on his popularity and he had also become a hate figure for the far right, which increasingly sought out confrontations with him as a means to mobilise the most reactionary elements in Spanish society. In this respect, he did something unusual, which showed real political generosity: he chose to leave office only half way through his term so as to allow for a successful transition in the Left’s leadership. He could have easily stayed another two years but recognised the Left would be better served by using this time to reorganise under new management.

This transition has seen a more plural leadership emerge, led largely by women, with Social Affairs Minister Ione Belarra taking over as Podemos’ new leader while the wider Unidas Podemos alliance [which also includes the Communist Izquierda Unida and various regional platforms] is being headed by Yolanda Díaz. Through her management of the government’s furlough scheme during the pandemic, as well as in her negotiation of labour reform legislation that strengthens workers’ rights, Yolanda has come to represent a form of institutional leadership better suited to the current political cycle.

The pandemic has opened up a new political moment in Spanish politics. If the post-2008 Indignados cycle was characterised by a form of politicisation through the questioning of elites and broad popular mobilisation, we are now in a moment of exhaustion and depoliticisation. Most people are sick of political controversy and just want to delegate responsibility to those that they trust to govern. The Left needs to adapt to this new cycle by demonstrating its credibility as a governing force, one that is capable of securing concrete advances for the social majority.

Ultimately, leaders like Yolanda and Ione are better placed to do this and Podemos’ role in this new moment has to be about consolidating the wider left space under Yolanda as a credible governing force. The other major task is the need for unity on the left after a period of internal conflict, with Podemos backing Yolanda’s plans for a new broad front platform.

No, I think rather than a question of our relative centrality or not, the issue is what role each of the different actors involved should play. We see the broad front project in terms of building a structure that can reach more people and we understand there are certain tasks related to this that Yolanda is better positioned to take charge of.

While Podemos has built a loyal electorate over the last eight years, right now Yolanda is capable of eliciting wider support across Spanish society. She is by far the best placed figure to broaden the Left’s vote, not only because people connect with her, her authenticity and charisma, but they can imagine her as prime minister. Her close links to the trade union movement also open up new avenues for alliances, and her policy achievements around things like raising the minimum wage touch directly on the material welfare of working people.

In the end, this should work as a complementary process: having a candidate who is somewhat dissociated from the existing left parties, and who can project a more independent profile, while, at the same time, these parties themselves focus on consolidating their existing electoral bases and putting down greater organisational roots. For us in Podemos, this also makes sense as the media has repeatedly targeted anyone who has taken up a role within the party’s hierarchy, seeking to undermine their credibility.

At the same time, the broad front is also premised on a process of reconciliation on the Spanish left. Not having a role in either Podemos’ or Izquierda Unida’s own party leadership also means Yolanda is better able to engage with other sectors, like [Íñigo Errejón’s Podemos breakaway formation] Más País. She has already made moves in its direction, even participating in a joint event with Mas Pais’ Monica Garcia before Christmas. We are still at an early stage but if Yolanda’s candidacy continues to gain traction and the process of developing a new platform moves forward, it might become harder for Más País to refuse to participate, not least because among progressive voters there is a real desire for left unity.

But the Left in Europe more generally is struggling with the task of renewal before the change in political cycle. We have to be able to show political generosity, cede space when necessary, as well as engage in honest analysis of the demands of the current moment.

We are no longer in the moment of occupying the city squares, with its rallying cry of ‘they don’t represent us’, but instead are faced with having to surf the contradictions of government. The latter requires a difficult balancing act: administering concrete policies that will have a positive impact on people’s lives, like the labour reform or the new sexual consent law, but while also maintaining a clear discourse around the need to transform wider state structures. In short we have to combine more populist forms of leadership, which aim to confront power, with forms that are more technocratic and centred on progressive administration.

In reality, within the new broad front platform you are going to find both forms, and they can be made to coexist, though it is not straightforward. While advancing policies with the limited administrative power at our disposal, the Left, as a junior partner in the coalition, also has to criticise government policy where it disagrees with it. We should not see our participation in government as precluding us from speaking out and in Podemos we have not been afraid to confront entrenched forms of power.

Well, this reform represents the first advance for workers in decades. Rather than making employment more precarious, as all previous reforms have done over the past thirty years, it moves in the opposite direction, taking important steps to strengthen labour rights and protections. Above all, it’s a legal instrument designed to deal with Spain’s high level of temporary employment, to rebalance the field of collective bargaining in favour of labour and to boost wages.

It includes many concrete advances. For example, it abolishes fixed-term contracts for works and services, which are common in sectors such as construction and logistics. Under the PP legislation, the widespread use of such contracts has meant that one in four labour contracts currently last less than a week. Many workers [who in reality are filling permanent posts] have been left to work on a series of consecutive fixed-term contracts, with little or no job security. In contrast, the new law will see these contracts converted into permanent ones by default, with the use of temporary contracts restricted to substitutions or very specific production circumstances.

It also shut the door on using subcontracting as means to lower wages because it reestablishes the primacy of sectoral wage agreements over company-level ones—thus ensuring unions’ ability to negotiate a standardised level of pay across a sector. And in terms of compensation for dismissal, the position of  workers who had been on temporary contracts will also improve as they gain new rights under their new permanent contracts.

All the government’s reforms are logically conditioned by the balance of forces at cabinet, as well as by the terms of the coalition agreement. Sometimes we would like to go further or faster, but I think in this case it is important to underline that we are facing a major shift in direction away from neoliberalism, with this reform representing the first milestone in decades for the advancement of workers’ rights.

During the negotiations to form the coalition, it was our insistence on holding the labour brief that really held up the talks. In terms of the talks, it would have been much easier to just accept ministries like equality, social rights, and consumer affairs, which on first glance might have broad, important briefs, but at the level of administrative power, depend on other strategic ministries to actually see through policies. Within an unequal coalition arrangement, controlling the labour ministry has given us access to meaningful administrative power and ensured we are associated with many of the coalition’s key social advances.

Over the past two years, Unidas Podemos ministers have rolled out a number of substantial policies in the midst of a global pandemic. One example is the guaranteed minimum income scheme, which had problems in terms of its initial implementation but which now reaches 350,000 households and helped contribute to a three percent rise in income among the poorest ten percent of the population during the pandemic. Or the increases we have secured in the minimum wage [which has risen by twenty-two percent since 2019]. In both cases, the prevailing narrative in the media was that these social measures would be disastrous economically but we have seen job creation surge past pre-pandemic levels, even as we are proposing raising the minimum wage again in February.

Equality Minister Irene Montero is also finalising a new ‘active’ sexual consent law and trans rights legislation, which while framed as cultural battles, will translate in concrete terms into improving the lives of people within these social collectives. The new housing law, negotiated by Ione Belarra, will introduce rent control mechanisms for the first time, and she is also spearheading a new mental health law.

But beyond that, we are trying to ensure the implementation of the programme for government with only thirty-five MPs while PSOE controls the major economic ministries. And there is a certain fatigue not only within the population at the pace of the reforms but within the government itself. Every day is a renegotiation over policies we have already agreed on, and our job is to ensure such measures do not get watered down while also explaining to people what it means to be the junior partner in coalition. We need to get better at communicating the reality of the balance of forces.

This is particularly the case because one of the defining features of the current moment is the level of political disaffection in society, with sixty-four percent of Spaniards stating they don’t believe the political system can change. But at the same time, seventy percent are also in favour of greater state intervention in things like the energy market, which is in line with our policy to establish public companies across all key strategic sectors. We have to be able to explain to voters that our presence in the coalition has secured advances which otherwise would not have been possible, but the reason we cannot have a public energy company is because we govern with PSOE. If you want us to go further, we need more seats and more power.

It’s difficult. For example, my mother is an activist with the anti-eviction platform La PAH and helped draft the legislative proposal that grassroots organisations put forward for the new housing law. It was a really ambitious proposal, detailing comprehensive measures to solve the major issues that are exacerbating the housing crisis in Spain. But then after we are left facing the political reality of coalition. And given the choice between simply opting out of the institutions and not changing anything or taking the risk of being inside and having the influence to change things little by little; in Podemos, we have always chosen the latter.

When I talk to people like my mother, it is necessary to be humble and say, ‘I know you expected more,’ but this is an important step. The agreement with PSOE for the housing law, which was approved at cabinet this week, is the first such law since the return to democracy in the 1970s, and will allow local governments to regulate rental prices in high pressure zones. We also want more and should not be afraid to say so but the partial advances we have secured also cannot be denied.

Ultimately, we have resisted better than most expected us to, managing to negotiate the contradictions of office while rebuilding before the new electoral cycle in 2023. Our minimum target for then is to secure a second term for the coalition with a greater left presence at cabinet so we can go further, but our real ambition is to make Yolanda Spain’s first ever female prime minister.

But before that, over the next two years, there are two other major fronts we need to advance legislation on. First, in the area of civil rights, where we are looking to overhaul the laws around freedom of expression and repeal the Partido Popular’s gag law. It is no secret PSOE have hitherto not wanted to open negotiations on these issues and we will have to do the heavy lifting on this. The second area is tax reform, where we are pushing for a wealth tax as well as a series of other progressive measures to tackle inequality and ensure those who have the most pay the most.