The early hours of a Monday morning, four days before Christmas: it’s not a time you would expect to see thousands of Spaniards waiting patiently to hear the Ghostbusters theme tune. But then the crowd of people who gathered in the Plaza del Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid in December were Podemos activists who knew that the song would herald the arrival of Pablo Iglesias, the ponytailed leader of the left-wing party. Hours earlier, Iglesias had led Podemos – still less than two years old – to third place in the national elections, breaking more than 40 years of political convention.
The rise of Podemos has paralysed Spain. The party won 69 seats in the Congress of Deputies before Christmas but, more importantly, as Iglesias had promised, it disrupted the two-party system that had dominated since democracy returned after Francisco Franco’s death in 1975.
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