Enrique Santiago
In 2019, we had a major debate about whether we should enter government as a junior partner, and across all the organizations that make up the Unidas Podemos alliance, there were distinct positions over this question. Within Podemos, there was a large majority in favor, but it was not unanimous. In Izqueirda Unida and the Communist left, there was a majority in favor of a parliamentary pact with PSOE but not formally entering government, while within Catalunya en Comú, there was a 50-50 split. But right now, nobody even within the Communist Party regrets having entered the government coalition.
We are proud of our record. Particularly within the context of having to govern in the face of a global pandemic and the war in Ukraine — a situation of near-permanent exception. We have overseen a raft of social protection measures that have clearly distinguished our response to the current crises from that implemented in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. Back then, you saw billions of euros transferred to the banks, whereas during the pandemic, the coalition guaranteed the wages of 3.5 million workers through the furlough scheme as well as introducing various new welfare schemes and new workers’ and women’s rights.
The current Spanish government has also been instrumental in shifting the consensus, however modestly, within the European Union away from a strict austerity agenda and opening up a certain space within which to question neoliberal dogmas. For example, the 2022 labor law reform, which cracks down on short-term precarious work contracts and secures new trade union protections, was not vetoed by the EU. Or after the European Commission repeatedly told us that we could not intervene in the energy markets, it ultimately had to accept the so-called “Iberian Exception” [under which Spain and Portugal passed a partial cap on the cost of electricity production].
For us, these are social democratic and Keynesian policies, many of which are designed primarily to stimulate the economy. They are very far from the policies that we would defend in strategic terms. We aim for a society in which the means of production are socialized and that is organized free from exploitation. But we are also aware of the world in which we live and the existing balance of power in which we operate.
So, with the limited power at our disposal, we have concentrated on protecting the incomes of working people and expanding their rights. You have to remember that we only had 10 percent of the MPs in Parliament in 2019 and had to accept PSOE’s red line in the coalition negotiations around not demanding posts in the four ministries of state: foreign affairs, defense, interior, and finance. Our major criticisms of government policy have been in the first three of these areas.
In these ministries, we have seen the least change in government policy, and this reflects deeper issues around the democratic nature of the state. Freely elected governments do not have sufficient capacity to implement policy changes because of permanent state structures. Spain is one of the oldest states in the EU, with five hundred years of history, and one that also underwent a very particular transition to democracy in the 1970s. This has meant that very powerful institutional and administrative apparatuses, which operate beyond democratic control, are able to reproduce and protect themselves.
It is clear that PSOE does not have the courage to confront such undemocratic structures. And this has been proven time and again in the last three years. Among Western European states, Spain is probably the most pro-NATO, and our lack of strategic autonomy on defense was decisive in terms of PSOE’s ill-judged move on Western Sahara. It is also impeding Spain from pushing for a different approach within the European Union on the war in Ukraine.
We have to clearly distance ourselves from such policies while also trying to ensure PSOE meets its commitments in other areas where we are better placed to enforce the coalition’s program.
The polls are very tight, but any renewed progressive majority after December’s elections will likely have a more favorable balance of power, and so we will be in a much stronger position to negotiate joint ministerial teams in these portfolios.
