The Impact of the Rajoy Administration’s Politics of Austerity on the Wellbeing of the Spanish Population (2012–2015)

On the 15^th of May 2011, a protest at the Puerta del Sol, a public square in Madrid, as well as in numerous other Spanish cities brought together tens of thousands of indignados, Spanish citizens who were frustrated by the results of the economic crisis, which had abruptly ended a long period of economic growth in 2008, and the way in which Spanish politicians had responded to it. Podemos, a left-wing populist party (by its own recognition), which constituted itself in January 2014, capitalized on this dissatisfaction, emphasizing Mariano Rajoy’s neoliberal policies of austerity within the Eurozone context and the lack of interest of the “political caste” for the wellbeing of the Spanish citizenry. The electoral successes of Podemos as well as the equally new liberal Ciudadanos in the national elections of the 20^th of December 2015 put an end to the political dominance of the social democratic Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and the right-of-center Partido Popular (PP) in the Congress of Deputies.