If Podemos Won

The rise of Podemos has provoked no shortage of stern omens in the international press, warning of hellish scenarios and dark times ahead were the breakout party to rise to office. One Spanish journalist has summarized those fears in four tidy paragraphs listing the legacy of the present establishment, reframed and handed back in cool satire. We liked it so much, we chose to translate it for Guerrilla Translation.

If Podemos won the elections, according to doctor Miguel Carvajal of the University of Navarra, Spain would be left with 25% unemployment. Corruption would be so entrenched that its treasurer would be paying Monedero, Errejón and Pablo Iglesias ¹under the table – not to mention remodeling their headquarters. According to Carvajal, if Podemos won the elections its ministers would end up working for the multinationals they favored with rigged bidding. They’d wind up as bankers swindling retirees, illiterates and the blind. And they’d conjure credit cards to spend dirty money on hookers and lingerie.

If Podemos won the elections, they’d spend millions from inflated budgets erecting useless buildings, train lines, highways and airports. Presidents of the autonomous regions would hit the lottery – a lot. They’d live in mansions, go sailing with drug traffickers, open Swiss bank accounts and have “trustees” burying hot-chocolate tins full of cash out in their gardens. According to Carvajal, if Podemos won the elections there would be more than 2,000 politicians convicted, their president would give his public speeches from a plasma TV screen, they’d take meetings with dictators accused of all kinds of crimes against humanity, and they’d sell arms to countries accused of human rights violations.

If Podemos won the elections we wouldn’t have one single university counted among the top hundred of the world, more than half the youth wouldn’t have work and would leave the country. Their economic management would be so dire that the national debt would grow until it surpasses GDP, just to keep on financing institutions as useless as the provincial councils, the advisory councils and the Senate. Taxes would completely suffocate would-be entrepreneurial leaders in the underground economy, and fiscal evasion would round off at a trillion euros.

If Podemos won the elections, judges would be handpicked by the political parties, and they’d have special courts, special retirements, expense accounts for lodging even though they have homes, no-one would ever pay for a flight, nor a mobile phone, nor a taxi, but could maintain several simultaneous public salaries along with private incomes, and no-one would monitor their absenteeism. If Podemos won the elections 2.5 million children would go hungry in low-income families living below the poverty line. Thousands of people would be evicted from their homes and take their own lives before living in the streets of the country with the highest number of vacant houses in Europe. You wouldn’t believe the terrible things that would happen if Podemos won the elections.

Produced by Guerrilla Translation under a Peer Production License.

– Original text written by Ricardo F. Colmenero
– Translated by Stacco Troncoso
– Edited by Ann Marie Utratel  

^{1. [Juan Carlos Monedero, Iñigo Errejón and Pablo Iglesias. Podemos’ most visible public figures when the original article was published.]↩}