it has been used, what values these voices have been associated with and what has ultimately been the meaning of the resignification proposed by Unidos Podemos during the first two years of their presence in the Spanish Parliament.

2. Methodology

In this study, the Spanish political discourse of Unidos Podemos during the 2016-2017 period is analyzed from a qualitative point of view, establishing as a time frame August 30, 2016 to December 13, 2017. Based on the parliamentary debates, we will try to see how Unidos Podemos has used the conceptual framework of homeland and attempt to find out what connotations they have tried to link to this term.

To do so, our starting point will be a corpus made up of 240 parliamentary debates corresponding to the mentioned period. The sample is drawn from a selection of the most outstanding debates of the legislature. Therefore, it covers all the discussions of the plenary sessions that are relevant from a political point of view and excludes only those that do not present a discursive interest1. This sample gives quite a good idea of the political language of Podemos. It includes speeches on various issues (economy, right to housing, ecology, feminism, territorial issues, etc.), as well as other more general debates such as the motion of censure presented by Unidos Podemos in June 2017 against the government of Rajoy, or the debate on the national budget.

Our main goal is to describe in which conceptual domains the term homeland is used and for what purposes. To this end, the focus will be on three issues: the Catalan conflict, where the plurinational character of the homeland has been claimed; the economic field, where corruption has been presented as unpatriotic behavior; and the populist discourse, where the homeland has served to shore up the elite-people dichotomy.

3. Analysis and results

The strategy of the Unidos Podemos has consisted in giving a new meaning to the concept of homeland and detaching it from its conservative connotations. Unidos Podemos has presented itself as the true guardian of the rights and freedoms of the people, against those who appeal to the homeland and the flag in their speeches but then rule against their compatriots. Real patriotism is about defending public services and protecting families whose members are unemployed. This defense of the welfare state is opposed by the blind patriotism of conservatives, who are busy extorting or criminalizing their rivals. While the Partido Popular calls the unit of the Ministry of the Interior that is in charge of spying on other political leaders “patriotic police”, Unidos Podemos calls for police forces that fight corruption and defend the “true homeland”: