Leading the 'assault of heaven'. A preliminary analysis of Pablo Iglesias’ leadership

In January 2014, a new party, Podemos (“We can”), appeared in the Spanish political scene with the intention of stand for European elections months later. This new party, without structures and almost without material and financial resources, burst into Spanish political scene thanks mostly to its leader, Pablo Iglesias, an assistant professor at the University Complutense of Madrid, widely known by the audience in regard of his frequent appearances in several TV political debates. With a political discourse based on the construction of a new Spain, Iglesias personifies the end of bipartisanship, showing his strength in the last national elections, where his party gained the third position, obtaining more than twenty per cent of the votes, only two points less than the second party. The main objective of this paper is to prove how the Iglesias’ leadership has influenced in the electoral results. To carry out this objective, we analyze the political leadership of Pablo Iglesias, focusing on the classical elements of the leadership’s studies, that is, personal biography, political behavior and political context, as well as his discourses that help us to understand the use of that resource to involve to citizens in his political project. Finally, we make a quantitative approach to study the impact of the leadership in the last national election, comparing the influence of Iglesias with other leaders. For doing that, we use the post-electoral surveys provided by the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research, where we can found the variables necessary to carry out this study, as the valuation of the leader, the proximity to a party, or the vote in the last elections.