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Eoghan Gilmartin is a writer, translator and Jacobin contributor based in Madrid.
On Sunday night, Spain’s former king Juan Carlos fled the country in order to evade prosecution over mass-scale money laundering. Once hailed as a leader of the transition away from dictatorship, the monarch’s corrupt dealings show how Spain's powerful business interests continue to stand above democratic scrutiny.
The anarchist bricklayer Lucio Urtubia made his name robbing banks in order to fund clandestine revolutionaries in Franco’s Spain. He insisted that there was nothing criminal about his expropriations of firms like Citibank — arguing that “he who robs a thief is a thousand times forgiven.”
Four decades since Spain’s transition to democracy, nostalgists for the Franco era are sharply resisting calls to topple its monuments and recognize its victims. Their fight to control historical memory isn’t just a “culture war” — it’s a bid to defend the power of businesses that profited from the fascist regime.
In one of Europe’s most unequal countries, Spain’s working class is particularly suffering during the pandemic. Unidas Podemos’s “COVID tax” on millionaires’ assets will help rebuild long-neglected public services — and end decades of bipartisan tax giveaways to the rich.
For decades, oligarchs like Real Madrid chairman Florentino Pérez have made Spain's old-age care sector a favored cash cow. Today, the coronavirus deaths caused by their penny-pinching are a grim monument to the failures of privatization.
Spain has announced it will take over private hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to fight coronavirus. Yet in the PSOE-Podemos coalition, some ministers are still defending fiscal austerity. Their neoliberal dogma could get people killed.
The new government coalition between the PSOE and Podemos is a historic opportunity for the Spanish left. After years of rising nationalist tensions, Podemos can turn the agenda back to the fight against austerity.
After a failed early election gambit, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has finally accepted Podemos into his government. It’s a huge achievement for the Left — and a way to free Spain of its sharpening nationalist tensions.
The clashes in Barcelona reflect intense popular anger at the jailing of Catalan leaders. Since 2017’s disputed referendum, the conflict has appeared increasingly intractable — and as protests become more militant, the pro-independence parties are losing control of events.
The long prison sentences for the organizers of Catalunya’s outlawed independence referendum are just the latest sign of Spain’s repressive turn. The Catalan crisis has brought the state’s authoritarian impulses to the surface — and set a terrible precedent for criminalizing dissent.
Spanish MPs voted down Pedro Sánchez’s investiture last Thursday, as Podemos refused his threadbare coalition deal. Yet it’s the radical left party whose strategy now hangs in the balance — and it may be forced into a humiliating climbdown.
The Spanish Socialist Party swept to victory in this Sunday’s general election. Yet the risk of a liberal-centrist government shows the need to do more than just mobilize progressives against the far right.
Polling for today's general election forecasts heavy losses for Podemos. With Spanish politics polarized around the threat from the far right, Pablo Iglesias’s anti-austerity agenda is struggling to make itself heard.
Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez styles himself as the main barrier to Spain’s rising far right. Yet his record as prime minister shows how little he is doing to stop it.
Data theft, spying, fabricated documents. The Spanish state is trying to derail Podemos and its challenge to elites.
This week nine Catalan leaders will be put on trial for sedition. With the 2017 bid for independence thwarted, the Catalan left finds itself more divided than ever.
After years of momentum, the Spanish left has stalled — clearing the way for the dangerous rise of the Franco-nostalgist right.
Podemos’s backing for Spain’s Socialist cabinet risks making it a prop to the institutions it once rebelled against. Yet it has also imposed its own stamp on the government’s agenda.
In 2015, a wave of social movements lifted left-wing mayors to power in Spain. Their experience in office shows the importance of linking institutional power to bottom-up mobilization.
Two years ago a left-wing coalition was elected to govern Spain’s capital. Now it's locked in a battle with the national government.