for some python programming I do for work I'd like to use pyqt4. I also use Anaconda and the Spyder IDE.  
To downgrade pyqt from 5 to 4 I created a new environment within Anaconda. The problem is that everytime I install Spyder in this environment the pyqt version is being upgraded to 5 again.
Is there any way to get around this?
(Spyder maintainer here) You need to create your environment (called spy-pyqt4 in this case) with the following command
conda create -n spy-pyqt4 spyder=3.2.8 pyqt=4
Spyder 3.2.8 was our last version to support PyQt4.
How can I use pyqt4 with current python and spyder version?