‘Barking, biting, or just… growling’? Unidas Podemos and Spain’s reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Existing literature argues that populist parties often moderate their populist tendencies upon acquiring power. Most studies on populism and foreign policy, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, focus on right-wing cases within European states or the European Parliament. This article instead examines whether this pattern applies to the left-wing Unidas Podemos (UP) during its role as junior partner in Spain’s minority government led by the socialist PSOE (January 2020–July 2023). Despite the Europeanisation of Spain’s foreign and security policies, the country has long been viewed as ambivalent toward Russia, particularly after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Since 2022, however, Spain has firmly supported Ukraine and condemned Russia’s actions, making this case an especially relevant setting for our analysis. Drawing on Angelos Chryssogelos’ thesis that populist parties often ‘bark more than they bite’ after gaining power, particularly in foreign policy, we argue that UP’s stance on Ukraine amounted primarily to symbolic ‘growling’: frequent, issue-dependent rhetorical dissent, especially on hard-security questions, that strained both coalition and intra-UP relations but did not alter Spain’s policy outputs.