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| Why the EU is damned to doom |
On facebook I follow the extreme left page, Another Angry Voice, and they have a small piece on Podemos, the new left-wing party that's virulently growing in Spain (even more worryingly the party wants to call a referendum on the Spanish monarchy).
Podemos and the appeal of Pablo Iglesias
Pablo Iglesias is the 36 year old leader of a new left-wing party in Spain called Podemos (We Can) that was born out of the 15-M street protest movement.
The Origins of Podemos
Podemos arose out of the 15-M "indignados" protests, which were a little bit like the Spanish version of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, but crucially the Spanish protesters managed keep the movement going and convert it into a powerful political force, whilst the Occupy Wall Street movement has faded away into near irrelevance in the grand scheme of US politics.
When the right-wing Spanish government led by Mariano Rajoy brought forward plans to introduce €600,000 fines for people participating in "unauthorised" public protests, they gave the 15-M movement a huge incentive to legitimise themselves as an official political party.
The rise of Podemos
Since Podemos was formed in March 2014, the party has experienced an unprecedented rise in popularity. In May 2014, just two months after it was formed, Podemos took 8% of the vote in the European elections to bag 5 MEPs (that's two more than the Green Party managed in the UK, despite the UK having 73 European Parliament seats to Spain's 54).
One area in which Podemos is utterly dominating Spanish politics is in the online sphere. The Podemos Facebook pagehas picked up over 950,000 followers, which is more than the pages of all of the other political parties in Spain combined!
The Origins of Podemos
Podemos arose out of the 15-M "indignados" protests, which were a little bit like the Spanish version of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, but crucially the Spanish protesters managed keep the movement going and convert it into a powerful political force, whilst the Occupy Wall Street movement has faded away into near irrelevance in the grand scheme of US politics.
When the right-wing Spanish government led by Mariano Rajoy brought forward plans to introduce €600,000 fines for people participating in "unauthorised" public protests, they gave the 15-M movement a huge incentive to legitimise themselves as an official political party.
The rise of Podemos
Since Podemos was formed in March 2014, the party has experienced an unprecedented rise in popularity. In May 2014, just two months after it was formed, Podemos took 8% of the vote in the European elections to bag 5 MEPs (that's two more than the Green Party managed in the UK, despite the UK having 73 European Parliament seats to Spain's 54).
One area in which Podemos is utterly dominating Spanish politics is in the online sphere. The Podemos Facebook pagehas picked up over 950,000 followers, which is more than the pages of all of the other political parties in Spain combined!
At any rate it's a chicken and an egg scenario; the Eurozone is a doomed project banking on economic synchronizing between the heavyweight Germanic economies and the more haphazard Romantic Europe.
A telling example is the rift between Germanic Europe and the rest (via Inside Europe):
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