This paper examines the mobilizational plane of Spain’s Podemos party’s populist proposal to transform popular outrage into political power. Drawing on thirty-four semi-structured interviews with current and former party members, it sheds light on how and why a group of formerly horizontalist activists decided to rely on a charismatic figure as both a symbol and a strong leader. This decision is explained in relation to the Laclau-inspired theoretical reflections on leadership and representation of Íñigo Errejón, Podemos’ chief theorist in the early stages and intellectual author of the party’s first organizational model. This paper also follows the evolution of Errejón and his circle as they move from advocating the need for strong leadership to blaming themselves for ‘failing’ to erect effective counterweights to centralized and personalized power. We see that they attribute this failure to their lack of a proper theory of organization, which, in turn, is tied to their belief that a charismatic leader could make up for the lack of well-developed organizational structures and lead Podemos to power before the ‘populist moment’ passed.