The Podemos Discourse: A Journey from Antagonism to Agonism

Abstract

This chapter asks whether the existing order—the democracy that was established during the Transition—constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to the success of Podemos’ demands or, rather, fertile ground for their being met. An analysis was carried out of the Podemos discourse, from the party’s launch to the formation of the new Spanish government in October 2016, using criteria based on the form, rather than the content, of the relationship between the party’s demands and the political order, and with politics conceptualized as a struggle for meaning. On the basis of this analysis, it is argued that the “purple party’s” relationship with the political order has shifted from being an antagonistic one, in which the order is incompatible with Podemos’ demands, to an agonistic one, in which the political boundary is erased, rendering the order compatible with the party’s aims, in spite of the differences between them. The analysis concludes that the increasing adjustment of the Podemos discourse to the political order established during the Transition is linked to an implicit acknowledgment that the order has not undergone an organic crisis but one of representation.