As Pablo Iglesias addressed a campaign event for today’s general election, a voice could be heard interrupting the Podemos leader: “Viva España” (Long live Spain). The heckler was using a phrase that normally belongs to the Right, but Iglesias was quick to turn the point on its head: “Yes, of course ‘Long live Spain’. But defending Spain means defending public schools, defending public services, defending public hospitals, it means defending [publicly-funded] pensions schemes.” In a classic example of his rhetorical style, Iglesias contrasted this model of patriotism with “those who privatize, those who end up on the board of directors in big companies, those who lower taxes on the rich.” To a cheering audience, he underlined “No brass-band jingoist is going to give us lessons about what being Spanish means.”

Iglesias’s combative, polarizing discourse has been one of Podemos’s main weapons in an election campaign that has proven to be an uphill struggle. The climate in 2019 is altogether different from its first electoral assault just over three years ago; today, media are overwhelmingly framing the April 28 ballot as confirmation of its decline. Polls are placing it at around 13-14 percent (seven short of its 2016 vote), with one survey suggesting it has lost a quarter of its support to the center-left Socialist Party.

Iglesias’s return to frontline politics in late March, after three months paternity leave, has however steadied nerves and allowed a slight uptick in the party’s numbers. With still-record levels of undecided voters, Iglesias has come out fighting — claiming that whatever errors he and his colleagues have made, there has never been any doubt whose side they are on.