"We arrived in Brussels as complete tyros and had to learn everything on the job. But we were motivated by the promise of doing what we used to call real politics that is to say, not the internal power struggles and ideological weather patterns of the movement (which were always abundant), but the actual issues, such as gender discrimination and unemployment."
"In May 2014, just four months after it was founded, the leftwing Spanish party Podemos (We Can) won five seats in the European parliament. As a recent university graduate who had been part of a local Podemos group (or circulo, as they were known) in Paris, I was hired to work for these MEPs. We arrived in Brussels as complete tyros and had to learn everything on the job."
"Shortly after that election, I got a call from Madrid: it was Pablo Iglesias Turrion, the charismatic political scientist and founder of Podemos, who was soon to be Spain's second deputy prime minister and minister of social rights. I think you should come back to Madrid, he said. He offered me a job in the social rights ministry, doing a lot of the same things I was doing for EU deputies: helping with speeches, communication and policy negotiations. Of course, I said yes."
A young university graduate joined Podemos in 2014 and supported five newly elected MEPs, learning policy work and parliamentary duties on the job in Brussels. The group prioritized tangible issues such as gender discrimination and unemployment over internal power struggles. Podemos disrupted Spain's two-party system and in November 2019 entered government as junior partner in a coalition with PSOE. Pablo Iglesias Turrión recruited staff to the social rights ministry for speeches, communications and policy negotiations, requiring rapid adaptation. Longstanding civil servants reacted with both resistance and enthusiasm, while intense political work produced profound personal fatigue and early retirement in the 30s.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]