page_title: Pablo Iglesias Turrión
section_title: Failed sorpasso
hierarchical_section_title: Pablo Iglesias Turrión / Biography / Failed sorpasso
caption_attribution_description: Español: "Sumamos para ganar" con Pablo Iglesias y Alberto Garzón.
context_page_description: Pablo Iglesias Turrión is a Spanish politician, serving as Second Deputy Prime Minister and as Minister of Social Rights and 2030 Agenda of the Government of Spain since January 2020. He has been the Secretary-General of Podemos since 2014.
  Before then, he was a lecturer in political science at the Complutense University of Madrid and TV host. He was elected to the European Parliament in the 2014 elections as the leading candidate of the newly created Podemos.
context_section_description: On 27 October 2015, Iglesias renounced to his seat in the European Parliament in order to focus on the campaign for the 2015 Spanish general election.
  Iglesias ran first in the Podemos in Madrid for the Congress of Deputies election; Podemos earned 44 seats; forming a parliamentary group with the addition of the legislators elected with En Comú Podem and En Marea; gathering 69 deputies, the new group became the third biggest group in the Lower House. On 15 February 2016, Podemos (along En Comú Podem and En Marea) delivered to PSOE a proposal intending to agree on the government formation with PSOE, but PSOE deemed some of the points as unacceptable; on 30 March, after meeting Pedro Sánchez, Iglesias make public he would renounce to enter government if that were to smooth the negotiations for the investiture of Sánchez as prime minister, while also declaring he was open to the prospect of meeting Albert Rivera, leader of  Citizens (4th group in Congress en la cámara baja), that had already reached a tentative agreement with the PSOE.
  After the absence of any investiture, on 3 May 2016 a new general election was called for 26 June. Three days after Eduardo Inda (Okdiario's chief editor) accused Iglesias of allegedly having received illegal funding from the Venezuelan government via a tax haven. The report on which the information was based (whose authorship has been tracked to the so called "patriotic police" set up by Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz and that included as payment order fake evidence elaborated through clippings taken out of the Internet), led to many headlines in the Spanish press for months although it led to nowhere as evidence in the Courts.
  On 9 May 2016 Pablo Iglesias and Alberto Garzón (Coordinator-General of IU), announced and agreement vying for an electoral alliance between Podemos and IU vis-à-vis the upcoming general election; this agreement came to be known as the pacto de los botellines. The coalition was named Unidos Podemos and Iglesias ran 1st in the Madrid list. The seats of Unidos Podemos, plus those of En Comú Podem, En Marea and Compromís amounted to 71, and the Unidos Podemos-En Comú Podem-En Marea Confederal Parliamentary Group stood as third political force in the Lower House. The results of the 2016 election brought a breaking point in Podemos as both Iglesias and Íñigo Errejón deemed the results of the election largely as a strategical failure, but because of different interpretations; Iglesias in particular thought the strategy of transversality endorsed by Errejón had shown its limits (conversely Errejón blamed it precisely on the tight alliance with IU).
  From December 2016 to February 2017 the 2nd Citizen Assembly of Podemos ("Vistalegre II") took place. Pablo Iglesias bid to repeat as Secretary-General of the party, winning in the leadership vote in which the only challenger he faced was Juan Moreno Yagüe (89% vs. 10,9%). In addition, his platform also imposed over that of Errejón in the voting of the composition of the Podemos State Council and some party papers, and thus his grip on the party strengthened.
  In April 2017, Iglesias and Podemos tabled a censure motion against the PP government due to a series of corruption scandals of the governing party. The other opposition parties refused to support it, and the motion failed, with only 82 votes in favor against 170 opposed and 97 abstaining. As no-confidence motions in Spain are constructive, Iglesias designated himself as replacement candidate for Prime Minister in the event his motion succeeded in toppling Rajoy.
  In May 2018, Iglesias and his domestic partner Irene Montero put their positions in Podemos up for a vote of confidence due to an internal controversy over their purchase of a €600,000 house in Galapagar outside Madrid; some party members saw the purchase as contrary to the party's beliefs. The vote of confidence in their positions passed with 68.4% of members voting in their favour.
  In May 2018, just after the Audiencia Nacional delivered the sentence condemning the People's Party as participant of the Gürtel corrupt
caption: Iglesias and Alberto Garzón in 2016 after reaching a deal for the coalition of Podemos and IU for the 2016 general election, the "pacto de los botellines".
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