From Grassroots To Government: Spain's Podemos Comes Of Age

Spain's radical leftwing Podemos took its seat at the cabinet table for the first time on Tuesday, nearly a decade after the emergence of the anti-austerity protest movement from which it emerged

Madrid, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Jan, 2020 ) :Spain's radical leftwing Podemos took its seat at the cabinet table for the first time on Tuesday, nearly a decade after the emergence of the anti-austerity protest movement from which it emerged.

Following almost a year of political deadlock, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's new coalition government was holding its first meeting on Tuesday, a day after being sworn in.

The ruling alliance, Spain's first coalition government since the 1930s, brings together Sanchez's Socialists and Podemos, whose leader Pablo Iglesias, a pony-tailed former professor of political science, takes up his position as one of four deputy prime ministers.

Iglesias, who holds the social rights portfolio, is one of five hard-left ministers in the new government, all drawn from Podemos and its political allies.

- Born of crisis - In the spring of 2011, as Spain was gripped by a severe economic crisis, hundreds of thousands of young demonstrators gathered in Puerta del Sol in central Madrid and in cities across the country to protest at the government's drastic anti-austerity measures.

Among the protesters, who stayed there for weeks, was a group of university professors, one of them Iglesias who in January 2014 set up Podemos, whose name means: "We Can."The group initially adopted a fighting stance against cronyism and corruption, advocating a redistribution of wealth and an end to the monarchy.

But it has mellowed over the years, while remaining to the left of Sanchez's Socialists.