As Spain’s new government was sworn into office on Monday, January 12, national media spoke of a major political realignment. The country’s most-read daily, El País, called the coalition between the center-left Socialist Party (PSOE) and Pablo Iglesias’s Unidas Podemos “the first progressive coalition” in “the current democratic period.” More than that, it is the first such government of the Left since the Popular Front was overthrown by Francisco Franco in the Civil War of 1936–39.

The new cabinet includes several figures who seek to reclaim that government’s anti-fascist legacy, from Iglesias to sociologist Manuel Castells. But perhaps most striking is the case of Alberto Garzón, today sworn in by King Felipe VI as Spain’s first communist minister in eighty years. Leader of the United Left — an umbrella group which includes the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), of which he is a member — Garzón has been a key player in Unidas Podemos’ drive to enter government over the last three years. He is joined in government by Yolanda Diaz, a labor-rights lawyer and veteran activist of the Galician Communist Party who is now Labor Minister.

In April 2019, Garzón sat down for an in-depth interview with Jacobin contributors Eoghan Gilmartin and Tommy Greene, published in Tribune. In this previously unpublished extract, Garzón talked about what communism can mean in the twenty-first century — and what the Left can hope to achieve by wielding governmental power.