Podemos and the 15M: How a Movement Was Captured

When Podemos Buried the 15M: The Bill No One Wants to Sign

A movement that brought millions into the squares in 2011 did not need tanks to be deactivated. It only needed a party claiming to represent it. Between the 15M and Podemos there was a perfect relay operation: the indignation demanding real democracy ended up converted into votes, seats, and finally, a video of Echenique stuttering that summarizes the state of the creature better than any analysis.

From the 15M to the Carpet: The Relay of Indignation

Podemos did not found the 15M, but presented itself as its political heir. It assumed the movement's vocabulary: the caste, the people, transversality. Pablo Iglesias understood before anyone else that the economic crisis had left a deposit of rage without an owner. The Gamonal uprising in 2014 was the dress rehearsal: the street protested and Podemos collected the mandate.

The circles were the promise of internal democracy, the place where anyone could discuss the direction. They ended up diluted in the party machinery, as lamented by those who lived them and decided never to vote for them again.

Forty-Two Seats: The Ceiling of a Contradiction

The peak moment came after the rebranding to Unidas Podemos. The formation reached its electoral ceiling: 42 seats. There they touched the carpet and, according to a widespread reading, the sacrifice of class discourse began in favor of the postmodern agenda: institutional feminism, identities, and gestures. The worker, the peasant, the people, disappeared from the script. There was one word to replace them: "the people".

The contradiction is that the closer to power, the less noise the original demands made. The caste remained there; the privileges they denounced, too. Only who occupied some offices changed.

Echenique, From Ciudadanos to Stuttering

Echenique has become, unintentionally, the symbol of the fall. According to information circulating for some time, before landing in Podemos he tried to enter Ciudadanos. This fact is used to underline that the anti-system discourse was, in some cases, more of a vehicle than a conviction. The video where he stutters is the icing on the cake: a scene that viral circulation has turned into a metaphor for a project left without words.

Fifteen Years Later, the Death Certificate

A balance frequently cited in analyses reviews the original demands of the 15M:

• Real and participatory democracy: not achieved.
• Fight against corruption and impunity: not only not achieved, but worse.
• Institutional transparency: not achieved.
• End of "they do not represent us": not achieved.

The conclusion is devastating, although not unanimous. Some argue that the 15M was a farce from the beginning, a system operation to drain discontent that could have ended in something more serious. For others, it was a genuine movement that Podemos used as an electoral launchpad and then abandoned. The conversation also crosses with the genealogy of the regime: some recall that the expression R78 was coined quite after the PSOE won in 1982 and the term "democracy" was installed as the only possible framework.

If the next major crisis fills the squares again, the uncomfortable question is who will be waiting this time with a borrowed speech and an empty seat.