Ephemeral Leadership – The Counter

The pace at which political activity often devours those engaged in it is an issue on which there is less data than it should be. While attention tends to be focused on those in the most prominent positions, the fact that thousands of political people are the subject of little attention contributes to a lack of a solid idea of the length of a political career or its characteristics.
Rarely, however, the event allows us to reflect on the issue to articulate a small research agenda. What has happened in Spain in the last two and a half years within the leadership of three state formations that occupy the right, center and left of the political spectrum generates some interest in this regard and can serve as a guiding guide to understand current politics in Latin America, where it is not difficult to find similar cases.
These are three men born in a span of three years in Madrid, Barcelona and Palencia, with university studies in law and political science. Two of them came to professional politics at the same age of 26, and the third at the age of 36, although their political activism in the field of communication and consulting began to develop a decade earlier.
While two of them began their journey in the autonomous framework, the other did so in the European one; they coincided in the Cortes, reached the leadership of their respective formations at a very similar age and, in turn, left politics between November 2019 and April 2022, but none reached the age of 43.
In his personal life, they were parents, one of three children and two of two children. The exit from politics, for those who did not have a previous fixed job, has allowed them to deploy their accumulated political capital to return to work professionally in the field of communication and research or to work less than two years in a law firm with meager professional results.
Pablo Iglesias Turrión (Madrid, 1978), founder and leader of Podemos, is a lawyer and political scientist, and has a doctorate. He was a contract professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the Complutense University of Madrid between 2003 and 2014, and dedicated himself at the same time to communication (TV and press) and advisory work. He was an MEP for a year from 2014, when he formally entered the political arena, and a deputy in the Spanish Parliament between 2015 and 2021. He left politics in May of this last year after obtaining unsatisfactory electoral results in the regional elections of Madrid to which he had presented himself, resigning from one of the vice-presidencies of the government of Spain.
Albert Rivera (Barcelona, 1979), founder and leader of Ciudadanos, is a lawyer and worked in a financial institution (La Caixa) between 2002 and 2006. He was a deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia between 2006 and 2015 and in the Cortes between 2015 and 2019. He left politics in November of that year following his party’s electoral failure.
Pablo Casado (Palencia, 1981) is a lawyer and was a deputy in the Assembly of Madrid between 2007 and 2009. He held a position of trust between 2009 and 2011 and was a deputy in the Cortes from 2011 to 2022. He was national leader of the People’s Party for 32 months and left politics in April 2022 as a result of an internal crisis in his party.
Three characters who, after a political career of fifteen years on average, ceased to have the remarkable influence they enjoyed in a stage of Spanish politics that was born in the financial crisis of 2007. The political professionalization of the three was a direct consequence of the crisis, and their careers culminated in the turbulence brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Latin American countries may also show not very different scenarios.
Thus, it is possible that Chile is today in a similar journey as a result of the political renewal that has taken place in the country after the last elections at the end of 2021 with which, to a certain extent, a process that had begun ten years earlier was finished. The change has occurred in different ideological areas of the political spectrum, but if you look at the governmental terrain, Camila Vallejo, the current minister secretary general of the Government and who is about to turn 34, offers interesting clues.
In a recent statement he made to the newspaper The Third with regard to the generational group in which it finds itself, the policy stated the following: “One of the most important things mattersWhat we have, as a political experience, is that we are trained in the student street struggle.”
In an opposite ideological dimension, in neighboring Argentina, Javier Milei, provocative economist, communicator and analyst, raises his messianic voice from the national Congress to which he was elected as a deputy in 2021 and prepares his individual assault on the Casa Rosada for 2023. He has hardly more baggage than his feverish libertarian creed, the confrontation with the caste in power and the search for an electoral harmony in a country strongly hit by its bad economic situation and its desperate climate of social inequality.
Leaderships at the height of the conjuncture, fortune and the liquid era in which they are inserted.

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The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish

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