Carolina Plaza Colodro describes the mutations that characterized the Spanish party system during the last decade. Corruption scandals, the management of austerity, and the reactivation of regional identities are among the factors that brought to the end of a bipartisan system based on the centre-right PP and the centre-left PSOE. Populism found favourable opportunity structures and emerged from the necessity of democratic regeneration, marked by a triple crisis: economic, political, and territorial. Podemos, once in power, started struggling to maintain its anti-establishment rhetoric, while the growing role of VOX ended the so-called Spanish exceptionalism, introducing yet another mutation in the Spanish party system, with important implication for the country’s democracy.
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