Old thread locked so replying to @familiar and @edge

Podemos are basically dead. They’ve merged with Sumar and a bunch of other minor leftist parties to form a single ticket under the name Sumar. The individual party organizations still exist but they negotiated a shared list for the elections. The primary motivation for this is that splitting the leftist vote could mean fewer leftists elected due to the design of the semi-proportional Spanish system. Podemos still exists but they’ve all but collapsed as a political force and are essentially replaced by Movimiento Sumar as the leading leftist force. Movimiento Sumar have tended to “moderate” and move towards the “moderate center”. The Sumar list does include some still radical minor parties are there is still a voice left in the relic of Podemos but the torch has largely been passed from the more radical left to a more moderate left. This is largely due to infighting within Podemos. Movimiento Sumar itself is basically a product of this infighting, producing a split between the more moderate and more radical parts of Podemos, but also personality conflicts played a big role not just ideological conflicts.

The main motivation on the left right now is harm minimization because Vox are such a powerful and radical force on the right. Like, true fucking fascists. And the leading lights of the “mainstream right” PP are increasingly adopting the language and tone of Vox. Vox have seen their support drop significantly but it’s not actually a good thing because it’s mostly due to PP adopting their tone.

As for Junts (the other question), it’s not very likely that Sanchez (head of PSOE, mainstream left) offers a referendum. In fact he’s categorically ruled this out after the election, but well nothing is impossible so maybe? But very unlikely. Also the political position of Junts (and the left wing separatists Esquerra Catalonia) is actually weaker now than it has been for a long time. Junts hold the balance of power so they will surely extract some major concessions but their political position is weak because (1) their voter support did very badly in these elections which indicates a loss of mandate, so if they force another election they risk losing more, (2) interest in independence is at a low ebb. It still is a very salient issue but if you held a referendum today they could easily lose that vote so it’s not a strategic moment, (3) even though Junts hate Sanchez and PSOE and all other leftists, they face an existential threat from Vox and so they would prefer a government of center to moderate leftists than a government of Vox and an increasingly fascist PP. The combination of these means that even though Sanchez needs Junts, Junts also need Sanchez. They won’t walk away empty handed, they will get some treats in terms of devolving more power to the autonomous province and also debt relief for the provincial government but a referendum is pretty much off the table.

The other interesting facet here is that support for the mainstream left PSOE relies upon the separatist regions of Basque Country and Catalonia. If the election was decided by Spain alone, then PP and Vox would have had an easy victory and Spain would be as right wing as Poland or Hungary is today. PSOE cannot afford to embrace separatism because that would be the end of PSOE so as a twist of ironic fate, even though PSOE are ideologically less opposed to a referendum than PP, they actually cannot afford it to happen.

As an addendum, to be clear PSOE are no friends to separatism anyway. They are slightly more sympathetic since the socially progressive ideology they have is more amenable to the democratic right of the people, they are still invested in the idea of a centralized and unitary Spain. Less so than PP but it would still be political suicide for PSOE to endorse separatism because their voter base in Spain would turn on them.

Catalan and Basque separatism is a very complex topic.