ABSTRACT
Spain is a country with an overall population of around 46 million. As in many other European nations, Spanish public-sector workers have seen significant reductions to their wages and entitlements. When the crisis first hit, the thriving building industry quickly ground to a halt, and unemployment rates, which were already high, grew even further. Before the crisis, it seemed to be a model for neo-liberal economic management, but its deceptive and partial successes quickly turned into abject failure. The most notable of these were the Indignados, 'the indignant ones', who aligned themselves with no ideology and instead directed their indignation at the political system and the corruption of political elites. Recently, a new political party has emerged that appears to draw much of its strength from the protest movements that arose between 2010 and 2013. Podemos, formed in 2014 under the leadership of Pablo Iglesias, a political science professor at Complutense University of Madrid.
