Version imprimableThe big loser in these elections is the Partido Popular. If there is one party that has represented the putrefaction, crisis and lack of scruples of Spanish capital, that is the PP. Its severe beating at the polls opens a crisis on the right; Ciudadanos seem destined to take over, but they have not significantly increased their percentage of the votes either.
This vote has also shown that, no matter how hard some people try, both in Catalonia and in Euskadi there is a social majority that wants to decide on its future and wants to do it in peace and without violence: the result of the pro-independence forces demonstrates this and any project for transformation will have to take it into account.
Although the people of the left have been able to stop to the right, we cannot fail to point out that it was the PSOE that benefited from this wave to retake its hegemonic position. We have no doubt that many people who voted for the PSOE share many concerns with those of us who want a system that is different from neoliberalism and that goes beyond the narrow institutional framework that the 1978 regime [the transition from dictatorship] offers us.
But we must also make it clear that the PSOE apparatus is not to be trusted: for 40 years the PSOE has systematically refused to address the structural problems affecting the working classes and has adopted a policysubortdinate to the interests of economic interests. A government led by the PSOE apparatus will be a government linked to financial capital; however, we are aware that many honest leftists have hopes that their lives will improve. We take on the task of participating in initiating and encouraging mobilizations demanding that the Pedro Sánchez government introduce measures against precarity ad climate change, feminist and anti-racist policies. We are aware that only the struggle will succeed in imposng them in practice and thus we believe that the best thing is to turn the mobilization against the right into a positive, sustained mobilization that puts the demands of the working social majority in the centre and in an independent way, without any trust in the progressive political class.
As Anticapitalistas we support and call for a vote for Unidas Podemos. Despite the fall in votes, we believe that it was right to support them. The social left and an entire generation that has been mobilized since the 15M lent their vote to Unidas Podemos. However, we must point out that the strategic turn towards moderation and gradualism by Unidas Podemos did not increase its electoral base, but led an important sector of the electorate to opt for "the useful vote". Nor has it improved the balance of power between the sectors of the left that reject neoliberal management of the system and the sectors that accept it. All these questions put on the agenda the need to rethink a new strategy to deal with the new situation: not being satisfied with the regression is the first one we have to deal with.
We think that it is necessary to build a broad grassroots project for transformation, with a strategy that goes beyond the electoral and that defends a firm programme capable of thinking beyond the limits of capitalism.
For Anticapitalists, the challenge now is not so much for the left be in government with the PSOE as to open a cycle of struggles that puts at the centre an ecological, feminist and pro-rights programme: to repeal the labour reform, the LOMCE, reverse the spending ceiling and strengthen the independent organization from below the working people. It is about working in a long term to re-establish a horizon of rupture with the economic and political powers, building a project of radical emancipation from the struggles. Only patiently building such a project will allow us to regain momentum and not have to choose between the right and the "lesser evil", avoiding new disappointments such as those we have already experienced in the past. It depends on all of us.
Madrid
29 April 2019
