The strategic debate inside Podemos has become a public issue. Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the Spanish party, even recently jumped into the discussion with an article explicitly inspired by Antonio Gramsci. But beyond the direct leadership of the party, the strategy debate involves something that pertains to everyone — to the scores of people and social sectors who desire a profound transformation of the Spanish political reality.

What started as background noise after the steamrolling of Vista Alegre has become an uproar. The populist strategy of the blitzkrieg-style “electoral war machine,” determined as it was to affect a quick and devastating victory, has turned out to be mistaken on its own terms. The very battlefield such a strategy was designed to navigate — that of electoral polls and political marketing — has turned the blitzkrieg against itself.

It would behoove us to remember the high cost of this strategy: surrendering the original form of the party — at its height in the post-15M moment — capable as it was then of providing an organic, geographically coherent, cross-sectoral feeling, that led to circumstances of overflowing voluntary participation. More than a thousand citizens’ “circles” appeared far and wide across the country in only a few months and tens of thousands of people were drawn to this new party whose name evoked action.