Spain's leftist Podemos leader wins battle for party soul

Supporters of Spain's Podemos party handed Pablo Iglesias a clear victory Sunday in a battle for the far-left party's direction, re-electing him as leader and backing his call to return to the streets as a protest movement. More than 155,000 people voted in a party primary, putting an end to months of bitter divisions between Iglesias and his deputy over how to steer one of Europe's leading radical left parties.
Such were their differences that they morphed into party-wide in-fighting, threatening to seriously weaken a party that managed to harness the anger of millions stung by Spain's economic woes and rise at meteoric speed to national-level politics.
Born in 2014 out of the Indignados protest movement that swept Spain during a severe economic crisis, Podemos, an ally of Greece's Syriza, went on to win millions of votes in two elections to become the country's third party.
"The wind of change continues to blow," Iglesias shouted Sunday in the Vistalegre concert arena in Madrid to a cheering crowd of thousands, standing on a stage flanked by large purple flags, the colour of Podemos.
As the vote results were read out on the second day of a party congress, the crowd shouted "yes we can" and "unity", applauding and shouting in a deafening roar.
More than 89 percent of those who cast their ballot in a week-long, online vote backed Iglesias as secretary general, while 56 percent endorsed his vision for Podemos.
They also picked a large majority of the candidates he proposed for the party's leadership council.
Buoyed by promises of radical change for a more egalitarian society, Podemos won 71 seats in parliament in 2016 as part of a wider leftwing coalition.
But it soon found itself at a crossroads that divided its pony-tailed chief and his deputy and once close friend Inigo Errejon, creating a rift over how to achieve the goal of replacing the Socialists as the main opposition and eventually taking power.
Should Podemos activists and supporters take to the streets again in droves as an anti-establishment group - as well as work for change from within parliament - as wanted by Iglesias?
Or should it shed an "enfant terrible" image that may be scaring away voters now that it has become a credible political force, and work purely from within parliament as Errejon proposed?