Zohran Mamdani\u2019s victory in the New York City mayoral election leaves the US left in uncharted territory. Though democratic socialists have won a series of national races in the decade since Bernie Sanders\u2019s 2016 presidential run, nowhere has a left-wing candidate had the opportunity to wield such meaningful executive power.<\/p>\n
With few recent precedents to draw on, Mamdani has invoked<\/a> Milwaukee\u2019s twentieth-century \u201csewer socialists\u201d as a reference for how he will approach governing, while others have looked to draw relevant lessons from the Paris Commune<\/a> and interwar Red Vienna<\/a>. Yet a far more immediate parallel for understanding the challenges awaiting Mamdani when he takes office in January is the Spanish left\u2019s experience after 2015 of governing two of Europe\u2019s largest cities.<\/p>\n Swept to office on the back of the indignados wave<\/a> of anti-austerity protests, and with the backing of left populist Podemos, mayors Ada Colau<\/a> in Barcelona and Manuela Carmena<\/a> in Madrid set out to curb housing speculation, rebuild public services, and democratize city institutions. Like Mamdani\u2019s mayoral run, their insurgent campaigns created an air of generational change as they united broad electoral coalitions of younger, middle-class voters hit by austerity, working-class communities, and center-left tactical voters to defeat establishment incumbents.<\/p>\n Their outsider status was also reflected in initial symbolic gestures in office. On her first morning as mayor, former housing activist Colau was to be found in one of Barcelona\u2019s poorest neighbourhoods, negotiating the suspension of an eviction against a local family. Meanwhile, Carmena<\/a>, a retired judge and former communist, took the subway to work, refusing the use of her official car.<\/p>\n In her inaugural speech, Colau also spelled out to her supporters that it was \u201cone thing to win an election and another to govern.\u201d She pleaded with them: \u201cDon\u2019t leave us alone [in the institutions].\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, once in office, both mayors quickly ran up against the structural limits of their powers as they grappled with nationally imposed austerity rules, media hostility, and coordinated pushback from corporate elites. Certain campaign promises were quickly discarded, while the torturous pace of institutional politics generated frustration among activist groups in both cities.<\/p>\n Both mayors quickly ran up against the structural limits of their powers as they grappled with nationally imposed austerity rules, media hostility, and coordinated pushback from corporate elites.<\/p>\n The two mayors, in turn, responded in distinct ways. While both looked to counter media predictions of chaos by projecting an image of competent governance, Colau was able to combine this with a selective confrontation with elites and an unwavering focus on her core agenda. By contrast, under extreme pressure in the Spanish capital, the Carmena administration slowly retreated toward a bland progressive managerialism, as her political group on the city council splintered between moderates and maximalists.<\/p>\n Both experiences offer lessons in just how difficult it is to balance the smooth running of the local state apparatus with advancing a bold reform agenda. Yet in Colau, Mamdani has a contemporary illustration of what it means for a left-wing mayor to negotiate the narrow path between political co-option and collapse.<\/p>\n Any evaluation of the Carmena administration needs to take into account its centrality to the wider anti-austerity struggle in Spain. June 2015 saw the country elect a series of left-wing municipal governments<\/a>, which, from Zaragoza and Valencia to La Coru\u00f1a and C\u00e1diz, were committed to challenging the European Union\u2019s orthodoxy of fiscal discipline and privatization.<\/p>\n But governing in the second-largest city in the EU and the political capital of Spain singled out Carmena not only for greater national media scrutiny but also more concerted attacks from the then right-wing Spanish government.<\/p>\n In particular, her administration became caught in a protracted budgetary standoff<\/a>, as Spain\u2019s former finance minister Crist\u00f3bal Montoro repeatedly sought to impose cuts on the council. Nor did it have much room to maneuver, as the measures in the 2012 budget stability law liquidated much of the economic autonomy of indebted local governments. In this context, the key tactical dilemma her administration faced resembled one Mamdani\u2019s will potentially encounter under the Trump White House, namely: how to position itself before a hostile national government capable of derailing its agenda.<\/p>\n Difficult compromises over which programmatic battles to wage were necessary. But Carmena struggled to forge a consensus over how to proceed among the diverse left-wing elements within her Ahora Madrid alliance on the council, which stretched from the small party Greens Equo to the Trotskyist Anticapitalistas. Halfway through the mayor\u2019s term, I spoke<\/a> with one member of Carmena\u2019s administration who acknowledged the mounting disaffection among activists and the more radical councillors. He argued, however, that in the first years in office, it was more important to earn broader public confidence by delivering tangible achievements like investments in social programs than trying to impose the Left\u2019s ambitious platform in its entirety.<\/p>\n In this respect, he pointed to the decision not to take back into public control the city\u2019s outsourced waste collection services in Carmena\u2019s first year. Though a campaign commitment, setting up a major new municipal company would have required city hall to bypass the legal limits placed on hiring new public employees by Montoro\u2019s ministry. In a pressure-cooker atmosphere in which the media was already talking up the deterioration of the city\u2019s cleanliness, Carmena feared subsequent legal challenges from the minister would lead to significant disruptions in this basic service and so renegotiated<\/a> the contracts with the existing corporate service providers.<\/p>\n This decision was explained to me by a member of her government in terms of \u201cthe need to maintain the trust of the broad progressive electorate who had backed the mayor only months before,\u201d a significant portion of whom were traditional center-left voters. Others within her Ahora Madrid group disagreed, with one such councillor telling me<\/a> at the time that the Left could not simply give in to established forces threatening chaos but rather had \u201cto incorporate elements of risk in its strategy so as to advance.\u201d<\/p>\n As these internal forces became increasingly polarized within the Ahora Madrid alliance, the Left struggled to cohere around a strategy for walking this political tightrope<\/a> between adventurism and its own containment.<\/p>\n If some of her councillors seemed unwilling to engage with the realities of majoritarian coalition building, it also became evident that the administration had no clearly defined plan of action for defending its core anti-austerity mandate. This was the case even as the city increased social spending by 53 percent<\/a> between 2015 and 2017 and ramped up investment in socially deprived neighborhoods \u2014 in defiance of the city\u2019s nationally mandated spending cap.<\/p>\n This increased expenditure translated into funding for a planned large-scale social housing program while the council also set out to invest heavily in extending the network of public preschools, women\u2019s shelters, and municipal sports centers. The budget for home help for the elderly was increased by 25 percent; the program of free school meals had its funds increased by 50 percent.<\/p>\n Carmena\u2019s administration did combine this spending hike with meeting its debt reduction targets under the budget stability law. But in contrast to the leeway afforded to the budgets of dozens of right-wing controlled councils, Montoro was determined to make an example of Madrid. In November 2017, he demanded<\/a> a 7.2 percent cut to the city\u2019s overall annual expenditure, as he took the exceptional step of instituting<\/a> weekly controls on the city\u2019s spending.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a full blown intervention . . . aiming to prevent us from carrying out our normal activities of government,\u201d one member of the city\u2019s administration told<\/a> El Diario at the time.<\/p>\n Yet even with limited leverage at its disposal, certain moves were available to the city in order to push back. Alongside legal appeals, other progressive mayors proposed<\/a> a coordinated protest campaign, including a mass demonstration outside<\/a> the Spanish Parliament. According to the then mayor of Valladolid, \u00d3scar Puente<\/a>, such \u201ca forceful, collective response\u201d was something other city halls had been pushing for during most of the previous year \u2014 but it had been opposed by Madrid.<\/p>\n In reality, an ex-judge with a highly institutionalized view of politics, Carmena had sleepwalked into this showdown without a strategy for organizing against Montoro\u2019s aggression. Her instinct was still to avoid escalation, even as her government divided over how to respond.<\/p>\n Colau and her administration slowly advanced a substantive agenda around housing, urban planning, and social policy across two terms as they moved against overtourism and real estate speculation.<\/p>\n Head of finance Carlos S\u00e1nchez Mato believed the council should hold out and force Montoro to unilaterally impose the cuts himself. At the very least, this would maintain the administration\u2019s clear anti-austerity credentials. This was something he saw as particularly important as Spain\u2019s finance minister had timed the confrontation to ensure \u201cmaximum disruption\u201d of the city\u2019s investment programs in the year running-up to the 2019 elections.<\/p>\n Instead, after a month\u2019s deadlock, Carmena ultimately agreed to make the cuts and also to drop the city\u2019s appeals in the courts. In this context, Waleed Shahid\u2019s description<\/a> of her administration as that of a socialist mayor who \u201cgoverned with competence and restraint\u201d seems particularly generous. These are both necessary traits, which Mamdani will be required to demonstrate, but which must not be conflated with the sort of political caution that inhibited even the limited resistance to a right-wing offensive that was possible.<\/p>\n Against this background of retreat, and after a split with the radical left of her alliance, her failed 2019 reelection campaign struck<\/a> a more depoliticized tone \u2014 stressing the city\u2019s innovative reforms in areas like pollution reduction, pedestrianization, and participatory democracy. This ate into the support of the center-left Socialist Workers\u2019 Party (PSOE) in more affluent areas of the city, but Carmena also dropped thousands of votes to abstention in the \u201cred belt\u201d working-class neighborhoods, causing the overall progressive vote to fall.<\/p>\n In comparison, Colau\u2019s administration in Barcelona enjoyed the advantage of greater budgetary autonomy from the Spanish government, due to the city\u2019s lower debt rate. Her task of governing was also made easier by the greater internal coherency within her Barcelona en Com\u00fa formation. Colau\u2019s position of hegemony within the organization gave it greater stability across her eight years as mayor, while a more integrated leadership team and an active, if relatively small, base contributed to a healthier internal culture than that of Ahora Madrid.<\/p>\n Instead, its challenges lay elsewhere. As it looked to take on runaway mass tourism and property speculation, it faced a relentless lawfare campaign<\/a> from corporate developers and other capitalist interests in the city. And binding long-term contracts and intractable legal challenges left it struggling to contest the model of inefficient corporate-run local services. In one high-profile case, her city hall found itself caught in a four-year court battle with multinational Agbar over taking back control of running the city\u2019s water supply, only for Catalonia\u2019s Supreme Court to rule in the corporation\u2019s favor early into her second term.<\/p>\n Yet despite such limits, Colau and her administration slowly advanced a substantive agenda around housing, urban planning, and social policy across two terms as they moved against the overtourism and real estate speculation that has blighted Barcelona in recent decades. In particular, the council pushed its legal powers to the limits to halt the Airbnb-ization of the city while, at the same time, implementing an ambitious Right to Housing Plan that saw an 80 percent rise in Barcelona\u2019s social housing stock over the past decade, albeit from a very low base level.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have made serious leaps forward,\u201d Colau\u2019s head of housing, Luc\u00eda Mart\u00edn, insisted in 2023, pointing out that by the end of the administration\u2019s second term in office, Barcelona had the largest council housing stock in Spain. But in the same interview, she also acknowledged that, given where the administration started from eight years earlier, \u201cmany of the housing policies we have approved will have to be pursued for the next ten, twenty, or thirty years to produce structural changes.\u201d<\/p>\n This points to a fundamental dilemma that Colau had to grapple with: how to combine the patient institutional work of developing a comprehensive regulatory regime and local state capacity in areas like housing with the need for more immediate results to sustain momentum and to demonstrate it could deliver. In this sense, managing expectations was a constant battle as it sought to offset legal reversals and negative press headlines with a clear political narrative and foreground partial victories.<\/p>\n This began with initial high-profile measures that signaled a break with previous policies that fueled speculation, such as fines<\/a> imposed on major banks for maintaining empty apartments and a moratorium on new tourist accommodation and hotel builds in the city. Yet in many cases, the type of bold campaign promises that engaged voters in the run-up to the 2015 election depended on formal powers that, in reality, did not correspond neatly to those of municipal government in Spain\u00a0\u2014 a challenge Mamdani also faces.<\/p>\n This was the case with the commitment to reducing housing evictions<\/a>, which, given the council\u2019s lack of powers in the area, saw Colau\u2019s administration set up a mediation unit to ensure banks and landlords reach alternative agreements with residents. Between 2015 and 2023, it halted evictions in 90 percent of the 15,400 cases it dealt with \u2014 even though, at times, it was criticized for not going far enough by the anti-eviction organization La PAH, which Colau had previously led.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are still a large number of evictions in Barcelona, but if you add up all the ones that they stopped through their mediation service, it has been significantly reduced,\u201d sociologist Carlos Delcl\u00f3s told me in 2023.<\/p>\n Managing expectations meant constantly balancing the need to sustain confidence in the Left\u2019s longer-term project for the city with an honesty about the limits of municipal power.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, even clear successes such as the containment of Airbnb rentals risked being overtaken by novel speculative practices being driven by international investment funds. Between 2015 and 2023, the total number of holiday apartments in the wider Catalan region went from 45,000 to nearly 100,000, whereas Barcelona\u2019s total remained unchanged at around 9,000 units, with the council closing 8,000 unlicensed flats during that period. Yet at the same time, developers flooded money into for-profit student accommodation and co-living units while corporate landlords increasingly switched to the temporary residential rental market (i.e., contracts between one month and a year) to bypass the pandemic-era rent freeze and cater to digital nomads.<\/p>\n Delcl\u00f3s argues Barcelona en Com\u00fa did \u201cabout as much as it could to hold back the tide [of speculation] in the short term with some excellent measures,\u201d while also insisting that the city under Colau \u201cbecame a reference point internationally for housing politics because of how it used the powers at its disposal to lay the ground for an innovative middle- and long-term strategy.\u201d In this sense, managing expectations meant constantly balancing the need to sustain confidence in the Left\u2019s longer-term project for the city with an honesty about the limits of municipal power, and framing setbacks and challenges in populist terms.<\/p>\n Indeed, even after eight years in office, Colau looked to position her city hall in terms of its opposition to the economic elites, and, if anything, came to invoke a more class-inflected rhetoric<\/a> in the 2019 campaign and onward so as to distinguish her formation\u2019s agenda from the wider clash of nationalisms around the Catalan independence drive.<\/p>\n Yet one of the major weaknesses of Spain\u2019s 2015 municipalist wave, including in Barcelona, was the obvious gulf between these left-wing platforms\u2019 broad electoral reach and their lack of social depth. As Barcelona\u2019s deputy mayor Gerardo Pisarello put it<\/a> toward the end of the Left\u2019s first term in office: \u201cIn 2015, we had votes but no organization. We had people who voted [identifying with] Ada Colau but these people were not necessarily organized in their neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n For Pisarello, one consequence of this lack of extra-institutional structures was city hall\u2019s difficulties in consistently getting its message out as it was confronted by a largely hostile mainstream media: \u201cPeople stop me on the street to ask us to better explain what we are doing, what problems we are encountering and who are adversaries. My response is, where are we meant to do that? . . . Through what means are we meant to transmit our ideas to our people?\u201d<\/p>\n At moments of heightened mobilization, such as the massive taxi strike that paralyzed Barcelona for five days in 2018, a positive dynamic<\/a> between the city\u2019s institutional initiatives and social mobilization was produced. It resulted in the Catalan regional government agreeing to the regulations of rideshare platforms like Uber that Colau had been lobbying for. That strike was called after Colau\u2019s attempts to introduce regulations to crack down on digital platforms like Uber were struck out by Catalonia\u2019s Supreme Court, which ruled they went beyond the city\u2019s competencies.<\/p>\n With taxis blocking Barcelona\u2019s main thoroughfares, and Colau taking to the airwaves to demand action by state authorities, the Catalan government agreed to regional regulations \u2014 which then saw Uber scale back its operations in the city. Yet more broadly, without a substantive, organized base acting as a counterweight to the pressure of lobbies and the bureaucratic inertias of the state, Colau\u2019s administration was left to slowly edge forward its agenda amid a constant war of attrition by political opponents and the media.<\/p>\n As she stood for reelection in 2023, conservative outlets pitched the vote as about Barcelona\u2019s status as an increasingly lawless and dysfunctional city under Colau\u2019s watch \u2014 even though the Catalan capital had seen the largest drop in crime of any major Spanish city since 2019, falling 16 percent. In a tightly contested campaign that ended in a three-way tie, Colau fell less than 350 votes short of securing a third term in office.<\/p>\n As with Colau, sustaining momentum within the constraints of municipal government will be a major challenge for Mamdani. The core planks of his platform are feasible, but they can only be delivered from city hall through engaging with a centrist Democratic governor and other state-level actors. Even where agreements can be reached, the implementation of policies like fare-free buses will likely take place in a heightened atmosphere, with national media outlets already talking up<\/a> the potential for disruptions and ready to frame any problems as evidence that the new mayor is out of his depth.<\/p>\n One difference from the Spanish cases is that Mamdani enters office with a far stronger ground organization that is capable of mass campaigning.<\/p>\n Carmena\u2019s term as Madrid mayor showed how easily an administration with a bold agenda can be drawn toward moderation. Measures that might not survive legal challenges, or which risk disruptions to essential services, are postponed for pragmatic reasons, often justified, but which slowly narrows the scope of what still feels realistic to pursue.<\/p>\n The alternative is not some easy defiance but rather, for Mamdani, as for Colau before him, governing will mean probing how far his core mandate can be carried amid political and administrative pressures that risk reshaping what is possible \u2014 and doing so with a potentially defining confrontation with Donald Trump looming in the background.<\/p>\n One difference from the Spanish cases is that Mamdani enters office with a far stronger ground organization that is capable of mass campaigning. This is a potential major asset that can help reinforce his mandate, but only if its energy is primarily channeled into backing the reforms being negotiated rather than turning every delay or compromise into a verdict on the project itself.<\/p>\n This also places a responsibility on his administration not to neglect its base and to avoid the type of unproductive polarization of the left space that was witnessed in Madrid. Colau\u2019s experience suggests that holding together a broad coalition depends on balancing the demands of governing competently with keeping the direction of the project legible and not being afraid to name the enemy.<\/p>\n Yet with local government heavily focused on the provision of basic everyday services, difficult trade-offs will be necessary so as to advance reforms in a way that can both keep the city running smoothly while sustaining the support needed to carry them through. How these competing demands are worked out in practice will be key to shaping Mamdani\u2019s term in office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani\u2019s victory in the New York City mayoral election leaves the US left in uncharted territory. 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