Does left populism short-circuit itself? Podemos in the labyrinths of cultural elitism and radical leftism

Podemos’ initial left populist strategy and electoral success have been the subject of much academic debate. However, amid the party’s rapidly declining numbers at the polls, scholarly attention towards the Spanish party has been on the wane. Based on a discussion of the existing literature and a mixture of qualitative methods, this paper attempts to capture the distinctive features of the early populist gamble and two internal elements that progressively short-circuited it. The first is related to the cultural elitism of Podemos’ leadership, a phenomenon observed especially within the faction of Íñigo Errejón, former number 2 of the party. The intellectualist distinction of many of its members proved to be a repressive instance that jeopardised the populist practice. The second is instead the return to a radical left fold, which is instead to be attributed to Podemos’ former leader Pablo Iglesias and his successor Ione Belarra. Party factionalism, strong leftist symbolism and the promotion of identity politics stand here among the most visible factors that negated the initial transversal approach. In different ways, those elements re-established the previous symbolic space that Podemos’ populism had been trying to supersede and sabotage the possibility of securing a broad and durable popular identity.