In the final leaders’ debate before today’s knife-edge election, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias was widely seen as the winner. Yet he secured this victory by doing something rather unusual. While other leaders traded insults about Catalonia and the national question, he instead focused on laying out his party’s ambitious social platform.

With a record 40 percent of Spaniards still undecided how to vote, Iglesias is seeking to position his party as the only guarantee of a progressive government. In the debate, he reminded voters that centre-left (PSOE) premier Pedro Sánchez had not made good on his promises to impose a bank tax, overturn neoliberal labor reforms, or release the names of those involved in a controversial tax amnesty.

Iglesias moreover emphasized that his party’s real adversaries were not other political leaders but the oligarchic elites determined to exclude Podemos from government. Focusing on the material needs of the social majority, and not the threat of Catalan separatists or extreme-right bogeymen, Iglesias directed his anger against the real “enemies of Spain”: the billionaire class.