Left cultural populism and podemos: is it possible to newly orient cultural policy in Spain?

ABSTRACT

Three main factors spurred a re-think of Spain's cultural policy: (1) cuts in public spending on culture: (2) the 2008 global financial crisis and its impact on cultural funding; (3) the institutional crisis and the popular unrest that found expression in the 15-M. These factors created an opportunity for rethinking cultural policy. This paper examines two contemporary proposals for newly orienting cultural policy. One is based on the idea of cultural “commons” free of the State and market forces. The other has been drawn up by the Podemos political party, and seeks to break the cultural mould cast by successive post-dictatorship social-democratic and conservative governments and is based upon cultural dissemination. This paper thus: (1) analyses the discourse on cultural policy in Spain by left-wing populism; (2) assesses to what extent this political current came up with an alternative to earlier policy paradigms; (3) discusses the soundness of commons-based proposals.

KEYWORDS:

• Podemos
• cultural populism
• pro-commons culture
• cultural policy
• 21st-Century Spain

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 15M is the acronym used both in Spain and abroad for the citizens’ movement that sprang up in 2011 as a spontaneous response to the economic crisis. The fallout from the crisis – mass unemployment and savage cuts in government spending – sparked widespread anger and public debate in public squares up and down the country (Sola & Rendueles, 2017). The 15M movement (so named because it came into being after a demonstration held on the 15th of May 2011) failed to reach its aims. Its goals were nothing less than root-and-branch reform of the 1978 Constitution born from Spain's tricky (some might say gravely flawed) transition from dictatorship to democracy. However, the 15M movement did create a period of instability that spawned new parties such as Podemos, which proclaimed itself heir to the protests, and pressed for national socio-economic and political reform (Rodon & Hierro, 2016).

2 https://www.congreso.es/web/guest/busqueda-de-diputados?p_p_id=diputadomodule&p_p_lifecycle=0&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&_diputadomodule_mostrarFicha=true&codParlamentario=188&idLegislatura=XII&idLegislatura=false

3 These two people were chosen as representative of Podemos. The first has a degree in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Philosophy. For years he taught and researched in the field of Critical Theory, Aesthetics and Political Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and since 2015 he has been Head of State Culture in Podemos, member of the Editorial Board of the magazine La Circular and of the Board of the Institute 25M. The second, Marcelo Expósito Prieto (1966) is a Spanish artist, teacher, essayist, activist and politician. He has been twice elected MP for Barcelona for ComúPodem in the Spanish Congress, and was Third Secretary of the Congressional Committee (2016–2019). He has been Academic Co-Director of the Independent Studies Programme (PEI) of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and has been a member of various activist platforms such as the 15-M Movement, Democracia Real Ya and Plataforma d'Afectats per la Hipoteca.

4 https://proyectobrandaris.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/entrevista-a-german-cano-i-lo-que-me-parece-hoy-politicamente-peligroso-es-que-podemos-termine-identificandose-con-esa-burda-caricatura-que-proyectan-como-puro-reverso-negativo-los-pensad/ [Accessed 22/12/2020]

5 The university origin of Podemos’ leaders and managers has been repeatedly highlighted by the press and academics. In the case of Podemos in Madrid, the core lay in UCM faculty members (leaders such as Pablo Iglesias, Carolina Bescansa, and Iñigo Errejón) and like-minded intellectuals such as Cesar Rendueles and Jorge Verstrynge. In the case of En comú Podem, one cannot say that there was a clear origin in just one university. Here, the party's candidates included Ada Colau (with no university career) but there was no shortage of academics: Joan Subirats (Full Professor of Politics at UAB and later First Deputy Mayor in Barcelona City Council); Xavier Domènech (head of the party list), a Professor of History at UAB and who was actively involved as both a parlementarian and as leader of the group; Marc Parés (Professor of Geography at UAB and IGOP-UAB researcher). Indeed, it was at the IGOP Summer School that much of the discourse on “the commons” took place, with seminars such as Common Goods, An Alternative to the State-Market Combo, and kindred studies such as Dimmons, Research in Commons.

6 Jaron Rowan has been one of the theoreticians of this Pro-Commons movement and has featured as a guest speaker at many events held by Podemos and by En Comú Podem. One such event was Encuentros 2017, held by the Regidoría de Acción Cultural [Cultural Promotion Department] run by María Oliver of València en Comú (Podemos). Rowan also ran one workshop intriguingly titled Como Tramitar Un Unicornio [How to Manage a Unicorn], held by Zaragoza City Council (governed by Podemos in 2019), and another workshop titled ¿Qué innovación en cultura queremos? [What Cultural Innovation Do We Want?], which was held by Barcelona City Council (governed by Barcelona en Comú).

7 In Jaron Rowan's book titled Culturas in Estado (2016), the author surprisingly fails to say what he means by culture without State intervention. From the book's contents, one gets the idea that The State must promote culture without intervening, to paraphrase Jacques Lang, France's famous Minister for Culture (Moulin, 1992). Nevertheless, this fuzzy notion runs counter to analysis in the Social Sciences, which holds that intervention necessarily creates an invisible school of thought and thus involves wielding influence (Menger, 2017). It is also revealing that the book's vague references to hegemony fail to set out intervention mechanisms such as subsidies and clientism. The book also overlooks project selection processes and the role played by evaluation sub-committees (Dubois, 2016). Neither does the work touch on the intricacies of governance in cultural institutions, which in Barcelona's case involve the private sector, the so-called “third sector”, and a range of public administrations. This explains why Barcelona's “pro-commons” City Council was ill-prepared in tackling the pressing task of overhauling the governance of institutions dealing with the creative sector and fostering cultural participation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation: [Grant Number Ref. RTI2018-096299-B-I00,Ref: RTI2018-096299-B-I00].

Notes on contributors

Juan-Arturo Rubio-Arostegui

Juan-Arturo Rubio-Arostegui holds a PhD in Political Science and Sociology. His doctoral tesis was awarded by the National Institute of Public Administration (Ministry of Public Administration, Spain, 2002). He is currently working on the value and impact of cultural facilities, evaluative cultures in artistic and academic fields, and dissemination of musical heritage. He is also pursuing related work on national, regional, and local cultural policies and develops his work as principal investigator in R&D projects. He is the Director of the Doctoral School at Nebrija University (Madrid).

Joaquim Rius-Ulldemolins

Joaquim Rius-Ulldemolins was awarded a PhD in Sociology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales de Paris. He is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Valencia (UV). He is the author of several papers and books on the Sociology of Culture and Cultural Policy. He is the editor of Debats. Journal on Culture, Power and Society, Board Member of the International Journal of Cultural Policy, and Director of the Centre for Culture, Power and Social Change Studies, University of Valencia.