 Luciana, you have seen the European Union being created, do you fear sometimes that you might die seeing its end? Well of course I am not very optimistic, I am rather pessimistic, but to be concrete, the issue of democracy does not only have to do with European institutions. Let's say that the European Union has been a pioneer in introducing what has been called as the post-democracy and this started in 1973 after the rebel years of the 1960s and the early 70s when they said well democracy we can't afford democracy the system cannot afford democracy the economy is a complex matter we cannot have parliaments dealing with it technocrats must take care of that and this process started back then and we are now in its full deployment not just in Europe also here at home and elsewhere but what I wish to say and I wish to tell DM to pay attention to one point because Europe has done an extraordinary operation that of expelling the people from its structure of course we know that there is no European people we were supposed to build the European people it was difficult and perhaps we did not succeed but the German constitutional court said something extremely important it said the European Union is not democratic because there is a lack of sovereign people and there is a lack of sovereign people because we do not have the intermediate bodies that can guarantee democracy in the intimidation between the individual citizen and the state political parties media trade unions organizations and so how did Europe solve the matter well it said okay you do not have the people but you have the individuals of course if there is nothing left but individuals there is really not much hope for us because we will have individual rights but we will not have a collective subject so if we help the process of building this intermediate bodies this intermediate structures which do not exist at the moment this is something that will in fact help the European union with the game that they are trying to play thank you Luciana if we perhaps change a microphone because there was a little bit of a difficulty thanks one to address what Luciana was saying how do you tackle the crisis of intermediate bodies in the European Union and what is DM going to do in terms of reinforcing the reinforcing those intermediate bodies that is to say what is going to be DM's approach to political parties trade unions and organized social movements perhaps we start with that first things first the question of individuals versus the police once upon a time both the left and the right confidently proclaimed that there can be no individual human outside the police so the individualization of the citizens is part of the disintegration of the european commons so you're absolutely right where we have failed as democrats whether we're left or liberal is in ensuring that the process of transferring powers from our nation states to brasses and to frankfurt is done in a manner where this sovereignty it doesn't go into a black hole unfortunately this is what has been happening for the last few decades especially with the creation of the eurozone how do we reverse it because the problem with the line of argument that democracy is a luxury that we can afford is exactly that which Winston Churchill outlined that democracy may be a terrible and very expensive and system that requires such very long meetings that make all of you very tired but nevertheless is the best of all alternatives and the reason why democracy evolved was not because we decided that it's nice it's because without it the decision the politics becomes toxic and the economic outcomes become catastrophic what do we need to do to respond to your question directly well what we need to do is to create the infrastructure that we're trying to create where all those intermediary bodies whether they're social movement states union organizations can join forces in order to confront the european union institutions and their particular contempt for democratic process effectively to say to them that this cannot go on we will deny you the oxygen of power if you insist on power relations of the 19th century brutal kind the whole point about constitutions is to convert power relations into political relations the european union has been about depoliticizing political decisions in europe it is disintegrate either it will be democratized or it will perish Jorge if i if i can bring you in if you if you can respond in english that would be amazing because it would save us time but if you prefer castilian i understand it sounds much better than i will do this in spain is so sorry but no fine totally fine totally fine it's quite difficult sorry it's my it's my horrible role of having to keep time which i really don't do anybody else okay um Jorge directly on what Yanis just said and perhaps to address one of the responses that we often get when presenting Diem Yanis says that in nine years europe would have to be and become a fully democratized continent and the answer is oh but this is madness oh but this is folly nine years is such a short time for such complex historical processes and yet Podemos was founded two years ago and in two years you managed to completely upturn the political dynamic and the political rhetoric in spain and uh you went very close to winning elections just two months ago so tell us how does this work uh is it true that nine years is too long if you can do this in two years and how do you do it um well first of all i would like to say Raymond Williams first of all i want to say thank you to all the sorry i think you have to be consecutively otherwise our interpreters will go crazy yeah i'm not a translator but i do my best i'm not a translator but i do my best in spain there's people that claim to understand and know everything about Podemos they think they can explain and they can give ideas about how it was created when it was born how where is it coming from and the first question i give to them and we all give storytelling there's no recipe to how to win we had a crisis of constituting power um it's an ongoing crisis emancipan del pacto social alcanzado los años 70 en españa después de la dictadura militar the first crisis comes from the power when they decide to be stop representing the the citizens the the populations and they stop representing them con una cierta expectativa debido al medio largo plazo they stop following representing those people and they start respecting the rules of that pact between citizens and democracy poner en duda el relato oficial que hasta ese momento se había dado sobre la crisis la crisis era para las élites un efecto meteorológico algo que sucede sin explicación the 15m was the movement that said that it was enough it was the movement who said that the it was the moment to start changing to start taking the power from bottom up and start changing the the the rules that were not respecting anymore from from from from the politicians se da por lo tanto una politización de la sociedad lo que antes se vivía de manera individual en soledad y que cada uno se la mía solo las heridas se convierten algo político si te echan de tu casa ya no es por tu culpa si estás en paro si sufres la precariedad ya no es por tu culpa hay razones colectivas y hay soluciones colectivas then what happened is that people start stop complaining in the private lives and start complaining in their houses and they start joining together and discussing about what was going on how to change the things and if they are killing kicking out of your house you have the right to discuss with your neighbor and you start you have the right to go into into demonstrations go to the streets doing politics on the streets from the basis of what what does is to make questions and to say that the status quo is not the one to follow the status quo is it possible to change and we can change the status quo pobemos first key of pobemos left and right is not in is not anymore the only dimension of discussion in politics it's not working anymore la frontera para entender como unos pocos una minoría privilegiada acumula cada vez más poder en menos manos how to understand that the minority is the one who is taking all the power taking all the decisions from the majority from the people entendimos que había que mover esa frontera we understand that this is enough y a partir de ese momento dijimos no es izquierda y derecha no more left and right es arriba y abajo is bottom up hay una mayoría empobrecida que sufre la crisis there are thousands of millions of citizens that are suffering they are poor they don't have jobs some of them are from the left but some of some others not y sufre mantienen una indignación no articulada que consigue lo que consigue podemos es tratar de darle voz a esa indignación popular que no se ascribe a una etiqueta and they are frustrated they are indignados podemos dar podemos give voice to all those who say basta who say it's enough para para terminar and to close and to close podemos uses the word casta in a different way that italiens do they use it in a different way they don't use the word casta in the same that italiens ya no responden a la soberanía popular se han emancipado politicians are not responding anymore to sovereignty to popular sovereignty they have said they are not doing it anymore they have revealed from their job y por lo tanto mantienen un estrecho lazo con las élites financieras por lo tanto han secuestrado la democracia y han secuestrado la decisión de la sociedad y en este momento es cuando el propio parlamento históricamente liberal they have kidnapped democracy in europe and they said that it's enough and they keep following financial institutions decisions sólo defendiendo los los derechos humanos la declaración universal de los derechos humanos ya se convierte automáticamente en un elemento de radicalidad democrática just defend in human rights it's an element of being radical in democracy thank you Jorge thank you for what you just said and for the hope that Podemos is conveying to the rest of Europe the sense that it can be done si se puede that is was expressed in Spain but thanks to what you're doing it becomes a possibility also elsewhere Yanis and I will now switch to the English language so that we can then wrap up the evening and I will need you for this as well so don't think you can leave just yet and my question is this two points from what Jorge Jorge has been saying the first to respond to the question of the difference between left and right you have said repeatedly that DM is a transversal movement that welcomes democrats of all sorts and I think I would like to ask you to clarify what you mean by that and a second question I will ask both of them at the same time is the question of who is the people of DM Podemos has been built on the incredible experience of the Indignados and of the 15M large-scale mass mobilizations in the squares without which the experience of Podemos would certainly have been very much more difficult and perhaps less meaningful where is the social power the popular power that you're counting on in the process onwards with DM the distinction between left and right will always be pertinent as long as there is capitalism nevertheless in Europe today we have neoliberals the demand of a government the Greek government and other governments to increase corporate tax and increase VAT when the left-wing government is fighting to reduce them at the same time we have left-wing governments that are reducing pensions in order to comply with the Troika the distinctions have been crushed by the ironclad will of the Troika not to impose neoliberalism but in order to ensure that the current power structures remain intact as even though they are through increasing doses of the returnism imposing policies that are destroying the ecosystems even these powers require to survive so DM is not left-wing or right-wing I am a left-winger but I would love to see in DM all sorts of Democrats coalesce in a coalition in order to stop the slide into the post-modern 1930s that are in front of us who are the subjects of DM those people Europeans who understand that united to stand divided we collapse into a post-modern 1930s Luciana can you answer the question which was asked here well many people well my grandparents talked about Europe as a peace project how are you telling about Europe to your grandchildren the Europe was built as a result of cold war could you could you just use a different microphone what you should tell your grandchildren that the Europe that was built was built that way because it was a part of the cold war and nothing whatsoever to do with the people that thought about Europe and dreamed about Europe in Ventotene but let me conclude on a point about what Yanis said we should ask ourselves the following question why that we are the 99 percent whilst the others are just one percent we never seem to be the winning the winners well it's well we could say it's easy to say no I don't like this and I can denounce it but it's very difficult to ensure that there is unity on a project they if we want to change the situation and that's why we keep being defeated so let's be very careful I don't think it's enough to just think about rights and transparency we must ensure that we get some power decision-making power and I'm not saying that we've got to take the winter powers as was what happened in Russia 1917 and I don't and I say that it's not enough to have 60 or 65 percent of votes to be in charge but we do have decision-making power if we organize society through the unions direct democracy bodies which starts the mindset of people so that sort of the and the opposition may sort of retake some of the roles that have been expropriated by the government so I'm saying this just to say let's be aware let's not simply ask that we uphold the human rights human rights are crucial of course but we need some power to sort of ensure that they're being upheld so let's not make the mistake about that what's happening in Europe with the support of many theoretical sort of advocates is that the thinking of Europe of citizens a Europe of individuals that means that they will only think in terms of rights without the actual decision-making power to implement those rights fulfill those rights there were European movements it's not true that there weren't movements in Europe which were strong we have the peace movement and we have the word social forum we have a movement and water and common goods which were pursued what we failed to achieve is to consolidate sort of power structures having a real sort of ability to intervene