Abstract

With the worsening of the economic crisis, unemployment and social inequalities in Europe, an analogy spreads between the economic and political crisis of the Thirties and the current one. As in that period, it is argued, there is a risk that a systemic economic crisis will lead to a general crisis of the political dimension and to authoritarian outcomes. Very rarely it is envisaged that the crisis may have «progressive» outcomes. It is on this second possible outcome of the interlacement between the political and the economic crisis that this article focuses, analysing the Spanish case of Podemos. What is Podemos? Which are its constitutive elements? How was it possible to build a party able to reach a wide consensus (the 20%) in a very short time (two years)? Trying to reach a general definition of the main features of this new party, the article investigates the elements at the basis of the emergence of Podemos: its origin in the academia; the earlier creation of an autonomous web-Tv; the role played by the Indignados movement; the theoretical foundations of this political enterprise; its relationship with the left-wing Latin American governments.