Killing each other in an office and hugging in public: the difference between Iglesias and Feijóo
The struggle on the left between Sumar and Podemos has nothing to do with the form of the battle between Feijóo and Alejandro Fernández.
BarcelonaIn Catalan and Spanish politics, several struggles are taking place simultaneously, some buried and others brought into the open. Every week, a battle between Sumar and Podemos stands out – most recently with the controversy surrounding the purchase of weapons and security equipment in Israel– due to its degree of forcefulness. Podemos has even declined Sumar's last offered hand, saying that "he is politically dead". Two parties divided after the failed union of Sumar and broken shortly after the elections of June 23. Meanwhile, in the PP there is a dispute buried with public hugs between the state leadership of Alberto Núñez Feijóo and the Catalan leader, Alejandro Fernández -with a book included full of reproaches, but maintaining proper form in his statements—apart from the Galician leader's complex relationship with the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Are the fights more vicious and public on the left, while the right hides everything more?
The director of the Institute of Political and Social Sciences (ICPS), Oriol Bartomeus, assures ARA that the fight between Sumar and Podemos "is typical of the communist-rooted left in Spain." He explains that "parties that are doing poorly enter a spiral of self-destruction," like the Sumar space, while "on the right, the fights are more subtle." Bartomeus emphasizes that the right "is aware of what is at stake" and that "they kill each other [politically], but the killings don't drag on, like with Pablo Casado." The reason? "The right has a more hierarchical and presidential political culture" and a "less ideological and more effective" attitude, and knows that public wars don't go well. However, "in other countries the political culture is different from the right," as in France, where "historically they killed each other," while the communist left had been "more solid" than other tendencies. Bartomeus explains the differences in part due to the characteristics of the electoral system, which in France is majoritarian, with constituencies, which facilitated the right to be "a conglomeration of men"very diverse, while in the Spanish PP it is the state leadership that draws up the lists, and it is not the only strong party, because the PSOE must also be taken into account.
On the other hand, Marc Guinjoan, a professor of political science at the UAB, asserts that "the left is not systematically more fragmented nor does it have more public struggles everywhere." However, he does identify mechanisms at work "in the Spanish case, in left-wing parties," but not in the center-left of the PSOE. The electoral system and its permissiveness explain the fragmentation and the struggle in the classic dilemma of whether to speak out or leave a party, in his opinion: "In the United States and Great Britain, the system is very restrictive, and leaving has much higher costs than in Spain," and speaking out is more feasible. He also maintains that the breakdown is more common in younger systems. For his part, Pablo Simón, a political scientist and professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid, details that organizations with a longer history "tend to be more discreet in internal struggles than younger ones" out of "brand loyalty," which is applicable to the cases of the PP and Sumar. Likewise, "size and institutional power are determining factors," because the larger a party is, the easier it is to "distribute positions": "The PP is very large, and there may be differences, but they are not made so public, unlike Podemos and Sumar, which are dwindling and have little space."
Differences
Regarding political culture, Simón says that "the more activist left favors social organization and is more likely to express disagreements in public, especially more so than in more conservative parties," which also includes the PSOE, a strong party with little dissent. Other factors also come into play, according to Guinjoan, such as "the left has come to believe it has a stronger and less malleable ideology than the right." Added to this is the tendency toward assemblyism and "less hierarchy," especially on the left beyond social democracy, which can lead to dissent, such as Pablo Iglesias and Irene Montero of Podemos against Yolanda Díaz. However, he adds that Vox has also produced leaders, such as Macarena. He also mentions that there are cases in which the left is an "aggregation of social movements," and with more actors, there can be "more fragmentation." On the other hand, he says that the right and social democracy may be more disciplined and hierarchical, and less accustomed to public debate, but that there has also been fragmentation on the right in the United Kingdom—with the case of the ultra-right UKIP—and "acrimonious debates" in the US Republican Party.
In the Spanish case, Oriol Bartomeus also recalls cases on the right, such as Antonio Hernández Mancha's fleeting leadership of the PP, or how internal disputes brought down Adolfo Suárez's UCD. On the left, from shortly after the Transition, the PCE and PSUC experienced bloody battles, and the PSOE rapidly evolved to abandon Marxism in 1979. In contrast, in ERC, the tradition has been one of "slaps and factions," except for the ten years of pacification and growth under Junqueras. For its part, the PSC has managed to unite the different tendencies. And regarding the Junts space, he emphasizes "the changes in names and strategic approaches to overcome complicated situations," but says that the space maintains similarities with Convergència—where the role of leadership has always been central. Pablo Simón comments on the "amalgamation" of Junts and how strategic dilemmas have divided the party in the past, such as the withdrawal from the coalition government with ERC.
