‘Legacy’, ‘failure’ or ‘fake’: The Transition to democracy and 15M as matriarchial myths in Podemos’ digital discourse

Abstract

This paper analyses the framing of two narratives that act as foundational political myths-  the Spanish Transition to democracy and the emergence of the 15M Movement- in Podemos’ party discourse. Both narratives provide collective explanations for the development of the current political scenario. The objective is to understand how they are reconstructed by a party, created in January 2014, which managed to reach top position for voting intention according to the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS). Five years later, it became part of the governing coalition. Of the total number of messages sent via Twitter from seven official accounts, between 2014 and January 2020, 409 were chosen based on the inclusion of lexemes referring to the previous mentioned historical episodes. Our analytical methodology applies quantitative content analysis, complemented by semi-narrative discourse analysis. Direct interviews with five party leaders are used to contextualise or discard interpretative hypotheses. Thus, we map the diversity of political strategies for the discursive reconstruction of this political mythology, concluding the existence of a common myth concerning 15M, but not so for the Spanish Transition, where there are opposing narratives from the beginning, which correspond to the divisions subsequently experienced by this party movement.