• Unidas Podemos ~ United We Can •
Unidas Podemos (originally Unidos Podemos) is a national coalition formed in June 2016, amalgamating 14 national and regional left-wing political parties and having as its principal partners the populist “new-left” Podemos party; the legacy “old-left” Izquierda Unida (United Left, IU) alliance, led by the Partido Comunista Español (Spanish Communist Party, PCE); and the smaller, national environmentalist party, Equo (which later left the coalition to join Más País in the run-up to the November 2019 general election).
Also forming part of the original 2016 coalition were Podemos’ three regional coalition allies — Catalonia’s En Comú Podem (In Common We Can), Valencia’s Coalició Compromís (Commitment Coalition), and Galicia’s En Marea (The Tide) — as well as eight smaller regional social-democrat, communist and environmentalist parties and movements, including: Mes per Mallorca-Balears, Batzarre-Asamblea de Izquierdas, Unidad Popular en Común, Izquierda Asturiana, Construyendo la Izquierda-Alternativa Socialista, Segoviemos, Izquierda Castellana and Democracia Participativa.
In March 2019, the coalition changed the gender of its name to Unidas Podemos to reflect party’s commitment to feminist principles.
In Spain’s most-recent 10th November 2019 general election, Unidas Podemos won 3,097,185 votes, for 12.8 percent of the total vote, down from 14.32 percent in the last-previous elections of April 2019. The Unidas Podemos vote total translated into 35 seats in Spain’s 350-member Congress, for a loss of 7 seats held in the previous congressional session.
In Spain’s December 2015 general election, Podemos and its three regional partners received 5.190 million votes, or 19.03 percent of all ballots cast, ending up with a total of 65 of 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies, Spain’s lower house of parliament (69 seats, if counting four Compromís deputies who opted out of joining the Podemos parliamentary group). Izquierda Unida won 923,133 votes in the December 2015 elections for 3.67 percent of total votes cast, giving it 2 seats in Congress.
More about Unidos Podemos can be found online at the following links:
Updated as of 12/2019
