The Spanish crisis began in 2008. Massive layoffs took place as a result of the implosion of the real estate bubble, which caused the subsequent collapse of the property and construction-related sectors. As people became more impoverished, the demand for goods and services dropped drastically, furthering the already negative consequences of the crisis. The possible rapid collapse of the world’s thirteenth-largest economy frightened global financial actors and politicians. Harsh austerity measures were imposed by the EU, as well as by the social-democratic government of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), through to the end of 2011, when the newly elected right-wing government then made the consequences of the crisis even worse. After three years of austerity, national protests, which began on May 15, 2011 (15-M), seemed to come out of the blue. One week before local elections were to be held in Spain, over 100,000 people demonstrated in fifty-eight different cities under the banner of anti-austerity and “Real Democracy Now!” (¡Democracia Real Ya!, or DRY). While the media in Spain and around the world insisted on calling the movement Indignados,1 the movement itself did not use this language, as had most traditional social movements of the past, but instead declared that it was for real democracy and inclusion, and against the false representation of the state. While it was later sometimes referred to as the “Spanish Revolution,” the participants themselves mainly refer to it by its date, 15-M, or as DRY.2
People came out into the streets and plazas because of their deteriorating living conditions, and what seemed to be a total lack of prospects for their future. But as the main slogans of the movement point out, people mobilized because they felt that they had no influence at all on the decisions made regarding the crisis, nor any alternative choice. This impression was strengthened by the upcoming local elections. The mobilization consisted mainly of people with little or no prior experience in political activism or mobilization.3 Like other recent movements around the globe, people were not mobilized by traditional political actors, such as unions or parties. The DRY platform appeared first on the internet, and spread through the dense network of radical groups and activists in social networks, blogs, and websites.4 But this was not a “Facebook revolution.” Gatherings, assemblies, and face-to-face contact were, and continue to be, crucial. In Spain the movement responded to the “Facebook revolution” myth with the slogan, “digital indignation—analog resistance.”
The construction of encampments on central squares began in Puerta del Sol, in Madrid, on the night of the first mobilization on 15-M. After being evicted by the police on the first night, many more people took the square on the following day, and started building the camp that then evolved into the famous tent city seen in images around the world. “Real Democracy Now! existed before the 15-M,” explains Amador, a participant at Puerta del Sol from the very beginning:
The gathering was called for in a very clever manner, using a language that communicates with many people. A very direct language—it has no ideological rhetoric, and instead points out concrete issues that concern all of us. But Real Democracy Now! didn’t call for the first night of encampments in Sol, the encampment, or what happened later. They evolved into it there, participating together.5
During the following days the square encampment spread from Puerta del Sol to the rest of the country. Many of the encampments were like little cities—highly organized, even including urban planners. The encampments were an example of a decentralized and democratic alternative to society in general—a glimpse of how society could be organized differently, a “now-time,” as Walter Benjamin would have said, describing a time that offers a different possible future. Throughout the day, various working groups met in the squares, discussing issues ranging from education and healthcare to alternative models of society, the internal security of the square, and the organization of concrete initiatives and protest actions. At night the squares usually held general assemblies. The camps in Puerta del Sol, and in Barcelona’s Plaça de Catalunya, became best known worldwide—but the movement could not be reduced to its best-known symbols. People occupied squares in both large and small cities. Even in very small towns people took over squares and held regular assemblies. The practices favored by the 15-M mainly consisted of the encampment of public and private spaces, including direct action in banks, demonstrations, and public assemblies, and non-violent direct actions.
Some media and traditional leftists have accused the 15-M of being responsible for the overwhelming victory of the right-wing Partido Popular (PP) in the general elections of November 22, 2011. The 15-M is blamed for not having taken a stand in favor of any leftist party, not having engaged with electoral politics—having rejected them totally. This accusation is wrong and misleading. The PP won only 550,000 votes more than it had in the prior elections of March 2008. It only won the election because the social democratic PSOE lost 4.3 million votes of the 11.3 million it had won in 2008. As it had been in government since 2004, it is more likely that the reason for the defeat of the PSOE was rooted in its politics, and was not precipitated by the 15-M.6 The 15-M did not call for a boycott of the elections or for participation—it was generally indifferent. Beyond that, one of the main characteristics of the 15-M is its rejection of the logic of representation as non-democratic. The participants do not believe—or at least strongly doubt the claim—that change can be achieved through participation in institutionalized politics. They mistrust politicians and political parties, and think corruption in politics is growing—an opinion shared by more than two thirds of the Spanish population, with 95 percent saying that political parties protect people involved in corruption.7
In early 2010, the Zapatero government put into effect a three-year austerity program, consisting of €50 billion in cuts to public spending. A second austerity program, promising €15 billion in cuts by the end of 2011, was also approved at the end of May 2010. The sales tax rose from 16 percent to 18 percent, 13,000 civil servants were fired, and a hiring freeze was implemented. The PSOE government, under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, modified the layoff protection law, making dismissals easier and introducing the possibility for employers to reduce their employees’ work hours and salary when facing economic difficulties (as in Germany). Cuts were also made to spending on home care for the elderly, and on child welfare. In 2011, the €2,500 support payment for newborn children was cancelled.8 Regional governments were advised to cut their spending by €1.2 billion, resulting in more layoffs, cuts, and privatizations—of the hospitals, for example. One of the many actions taken by the 15-M was in Barcelona, when, on June 15, 2011, it mobilized and surrounded the regional Catalan parliament when it voted on regional cuts. People turned their backs on the parliament in their thousands, and organized real democratic assemblies.
Before the PP and its presidential candidate, Mariano Rajoy, experienced a landslide victory in the general election of November 20, 2011, they had promised to discontinue the strict austerity politics of the PSOE government. On December 30, 2011, ten days after having assumed control of the government, the PP announced €9 billion of cuts in public spending, extended the freeze on salaries and pensions until the end of 2012, and increased the working week for public servants from 35 to 37.5 hours. At the end of March 2012, Rajoy announced an additional €27 billion in cuts to public spending, and then, only nine days later, added another €10 billion in cuts to education (€3 billion) and healthcare (€7 billion).9 Among other changes, a general co-payment for all medicine was introduced—even for pensioners.
In June 2012 the financial ministers of the Eurozone approved a loan of up to €100 billion in EU rescue funds, for a Spanish bank restructuring fund to recapitalize Spain’s “bad banks”—mainly regional and savings banks. In order to meet conditions for the bailout, Spain’s banks had to write off “hybrid capital instruments.” While small investors have lost their money because of fraudulent investment plans and retirement packages full of cheap shares and bonds with almost no guarantees, the banks have been recapitalized. In July 2012, Rajoy presented a new austerity plan to parliament in order to save €65 billion in two years. Among other things, the austerity plan included a 10 percent reduction in unemployment pay after six months, an increase in the sales tax from 18 percent to 21 percent (a step Rajoy and the PP had rejected during their electoral campaign), and the cancellation of Christmas bonuses for public servants. In August, Rajoy increased the austerity cuts from €65 billion to €102 billion.
In only five years—from 2007 to 2012—3.2 million of the 20.5 million jobs in Spain were destroyed. This meant that 15 out of 100 employees lost their jobs, and 10 percent of all Spanish households, amounting to 380,000, did not have even one member working. Meanwhile, the drastic decline in salary for the working poor grew from 10.8 percent in 2007 to 12.7 percent in 2010. By January 2013, unemployment in Spain had risen to 26.2 percent, compared with 10.8 percent in the whole of the EU. Unemployment, reduced wages, cuts to social services, and so on, have led to a pauperization of the population. In the spring of 2013, more than 11 million of Spain’s 46 million inhabitants already lived in poverty.10
On May 27, 2011 “the Mossos”—the Catalonian police—made a brutal attempt to evict the occupied Plaça de Catalunya, in Barcelona. They used clubs and plastic bullets, causing more than 120 injuries among those in the plaza. Instead of crushing the movement, the state repression had the opposite effect—many more people poured onto the streets and plazas. In many cities, the occupied central plazas functioned as a sort of public arena for citizens’ debates. In Barcelona, and particularly in Madrid, thousands of people gathered in the plazas every day, with the formation of hundreds of working and discussion groups. All of the plazas also saw regular public assemblies, where participants in the movement discussed and made decisions on various issues and actions.
As was true in Greece, a movement for change cannot be confined to a central square. After a few weeks in the plazas, participants in 15-M in the bigger cities began to organize in neighborhoods. The Puerta del Sol encampment was dissolved on June 12 by the full consensus General Assembly of the Plaza—an assembly that lasted all night. The decision was considered both the most likely to produce concrete outcomes, since the movement would be re-territorialized into neighborhoods and other locations, and the most democratic, in the sense that more people could participate. Barcelona and a few other smaller towns retained the plaza encampments for a little longer—and the more general re-territorialization did not entail a distancing from national or regional mobilizations. On June 19, 2011, demonstrations took place in more than eighty Spanish cities. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Madrid alone to protest the EU’s economic and financial policies.
Just as the media, in 2012, was beginning to declare the movements dead, as they had in the US and other parts of the world—not noticing the neighborhood construction, but only looking to the central plazas—there were again massive mobilizations. On February 19 more than a million people demonstrated in several cities against Rajoy’s austerity program. On July 19, more than 4 million people again protested against the second austerity package of the PP government. Meanwhile the traditional unions also mobilized, and in the fall they called for a general strike. Instead of the movements being “dead,” as so many were claiming, what was in fact happening was that they were reinventing themselves, and growing in depth and breadth—in a process that still continues.
Current mobilizations include the “siege of parliament” of September 25, 2012, as well as various new forms of action. Consistent in these formations is the continued practice within the squares of horizontal relationships, direct action, and self-organization. The pre-existing movement that probably grew most strongly as a consequence of the 15-M was the movement against foreclosure, the Plataforma de Afectedos por la Hipotéca (PAH). It is organized in chapters all over the country, and organizes concrete resistance to foreclosures—a trend that has involved hundreds of thousands of people since the crisis started—and also occupies empty buildings for homeless families. The PAH not only continues to grow throughout Spain, but also now offers an example to other movements throughout Europe and the US. Other examples of movements organizing in the wake of 15-M, and using similar methods—or the same “DNA” as many in the movements say—include the “green tide” (marea verde), the movement in defense of public education, and the “white tide” (marea blanca), the movement in defense of public healthcare. Far from being over, the 15-M is transforming into a way of organizing, and of pursuing politics, in a different way.
Between December 2011 and December 2013, we conducted interviews with a dozen participants of the 15-M mobilizations, most of whom were interviewed several times over the course of those nineteen months. None belong to any political party. Most of the interviewees had studied at university, or were professionals, even if they did not have jobs in their professions. This corresponds to the general composition of the 15-M activists.
When talking about crisis, people in the Spanish state mention the cuts in healthcare, education, pensions, and so on, as well as the lack of jobs and prospects, especially for young people. More than in other places, the responsibility for the crisis in Spain is attributed to the non-democratic system of representative democracy, in which two parties (the PP and the PSOE) have more or less shared power, and in which their representatives have used their political positions to enrich themselves. The rejection of institutionalized politics seems to be much stronger here than in other places, and is often the focus of conversations on the crisis. Politicians are generally considered corrupt, and, rather than being in-depth discussions of the crisis itself, the conversations we participated in tended both to reject representative democracy as it exists and, even more, to explore the new forms of democracy being developed by the movements.
Eva Fernández is a forty-two-year-old writer and novelist who works in the field of international labor cooperation and participates in the Cine sin Autor (cinema without an author) collective, which works in poor neighborhoods of Madrid and creates films collaboratively with the inhabitants.
Eva, Cine sin Autor, Madrid: The enchantment and inebriation ended—now they just plunder us. People say it’s not a crisis, but a swindle. That’s the cause of the indignation converging in the 15-M movement, and then the following “colors,” green being the first, linked to the stand for a public, free, good-quality education. The “green tide” movement, the “white tide,” with almost all professionals of the health sector mobilized, is very strong and has great approval in society. It tries to resist the aggressive policies of the present-day government to convert health services into private business, denouncing the balance of the national patrimony and political corruption, attacking on every flank all the parties that have achieved power with a vast majority, both PP and PSOE—parties that, in accordance with current electoral law, have alternated power between them until now.
Gerardo is forty-four, a filmmaker, multimedia designer, and scriptwriter. He is one of the founders of Cine sin Autor.
Gerardo, Cine sin Autor, Madrid: In Spain a brutal divide has emerged between political power/politicians and the people. There are chains of impressive corruption that have emerged: it is the monarchy that has been beaten already … and for the common people there are foreclosures, the millions of unemployed are ever increasing, and there are no prospects for a better future, so that an entire population will fall into poverty. It’s a big division.
Aitor Tinoco I Girona, a twenty-eight-year-old participant in the Universidad Nomada, ¡Democracia Real Ya!, and in the 15-M in Barcelona, has prior organizing experience, from the movement against capitalist globalization to the EuroMayDay mobilizations.
Aitor, ¡Democracia Real Ya!, Barcelona: Cutbacks in pensions are handed out to the elderly—and more, the right of healthcare is also refused to them, and the right to education for their children and grandchildren too. They talk about cuts, but that’s not what it is—it’s privatization. For example, with the hospitals: they’re making them private so that laboratories can come conduct research. We can see this process in all the common wealth we have generated as a territory, such as public education, hospitals, and beyond—and now they are privatizing. In Catalonia they told us we need to sell all public enterprises and that they are ready to sell them to their friends. Telefónica, for example, was a national enterprise, privatized by President Aznar, who sold it to his schoolmate, you see? The same will happen here. For example, we have a health minister who was former president of the Chamber of Hospitals of Catalonia—private hospitals, of course.
And why don’t people have a right to bankruptcy? An enterprise that is a legal entity can declare itself bankrupt and all its debts disappear—if they don’t have the money, they don’t pay. So why must I keep paying my debts if I don’t have the money? That’s what happens with a lot of people who have been evicted. And, even worse, they’re put on the lists of the indebted. And then, if they are lucky enough to find a job, all they earn will go to paying their debt. We need to give people the right to bankruptcy!
Ernest Marco, a thirty-four-year-old chemical engineering professor, and a participant in both the PAH and the 15-M, has prior organizing experience, from the movement against capitalist globalization to the Euro May Day mobilizations.
Ernest, PAH, Barcelona: This is just the beginning. This crisis is not just economic and short-term, but will go on for a long period. I don’t know what forms the movements will take. I have learned to be more humble. We’ve never been very ideological as groups. We have identified ourselves a bit with this Zapatista manner of doing politics: walking and asking.
Luis Moreno Caballud, thirty-seven, was active in both Barcelona and in the early days of Occupy before the occupation of Zuccotti Park, and had some prior movement experience. Together with a few other Latin Americans, he initiated Occupy en Español, a parallel Spanish-speaking assembly in New York.
Luis, 15-M, Madrid: In the surveys in which people are asked about the problems that most concern them, politicians are the third-biggest problem in Spain. People don’t trust them—there were many cases of corruption, and people no longer trust representation. Another factor that has been crucial is that increasingly more decisions have been handed over to transnational institutions. Look at how fundamental the narrative of being part of the European Union has been for Spain. Neoliberalism was introduced in Spain in the form of becoming “modern” and admitted into Europe. And the figure that has most assumed the role of a “hidden power” is the market. Mass media repeat it all the time—markets this and markets that … markets have become a fundamental political factor for anyone that watches TV in Spain. It looks like a power in the shadows, to which, basically and constantly, political powers are responding.
Ana Méndez de Andés is an architect and urban planner, and has been a participant in the leftist autonomous research initiative, Observatorio Metropolitano, the blog Madrilonia, and the publishing house, bookstore, and café, Traficantes de Sueños.
Ana, Observatorio Metropolitano, Madrid: One of the ideas is that of democratic revolution. And this is in a certain way a surprise and a change for social movements. We had always thought what we lived in was a democracy, and that democracy had limits and was not enough, and we wanted something different. We wanted a revolution in which we will invent a new system that will take us to another place, and suddenly we realized that maybe revolution consists in asking for an authentic democracy. This is in a way a kind of shock for the people that come from a certain tradition of movements. At one point I found myself demanding something that would have to be surpassed.
This idea of “Real Democracy Now!” and that of “You Don’t Represent Us” is the foundation of the 15-M movement. This is the most common feeling. It is authentic discomfort, because decisions are made over which we have no control at all. And how can we begin to win that control over our own lives through something that we call democracy?
The problem is “You don’t represent us, this is not democracy”; but it’s also the means and system of production of this financial capitalism that can’t be democratic since, to work, it needs to create inequity. It’s like if capitalism were the source of electricity and always needed positive and negative poles. It’s not explicit, but there is a branch of the movement that is very clear that the struggle for democracy is an anti-capitalist struggle.
In Spain the conversation on rupture is linked to what happened in the plazas, particularly in Puerta del Sol and Plaça de Catalunya, and how that sparked the imagination of the population about other forms of organizing. Whereas in Greece and the US the plaza encampments themselves emerged out of an ever-growing rupture in society.
Aitor, ¡Democracia Real Ya! and Universidad Nómada, Barcelona: I knew “Real Democracy Now!” via Facebook, and because a friend told me a little while before about a mobilization that would take place on May 15, under the slogan, “We are not merchandise in the hands of politicians and bankers,” which was something that sounded really new. It seemed like a really inclusive movement. The last meeting I attended was in February or March. It was a Friday and in a restaurant. There were thirty-five of us, but no one knew each other. I remember that there was an old man who worked as a security guard, and who didn’t stop walking around the whole evening. I thought that he was the bar’s security guard, because we were sitting down and nobody was consuming, and he was observing us. Then, when we decided to move to another place to hold the meeting, the old man followed us. When I approached him he told me that he was a security worker who also saw the call and came to join us. It was a real example of the variety and diversity of the people who took part in this from the beginning.
Ayelen Lozada is a thirty-one-year-old physiotherapist in Madrid, who was not politically active before the 15-M, although she had a marked political and social sensibility as the daughter of politically exiled Argentines.
Ayelen, 15-M, Madrid: The encampment was a fascinating experience, a mini-city in Puerta del Sol. Suddenly we were creating a new reality, something that we couldn’t have imagined before. If they had said this would happen a week before, you would have said, “Impossible!”—and suddenly we made it possible. Breaking into the field of the impossible is great, because it made us think, “If this is possible, how many other things are too?” Then it links again with the need for people to ask themselves, “How many things happen to me that I am just reproducing blindly? And how many things am I not creating?” When the encampment shows as possible something we haven’t imagined before, an infinite field opens for things to imagine and then, suddenly, you join with others to say: “And now what can we do?” This has imprinted itself a lot in people’s daily lives.
I came to the square first when I heard about the repression—it was through Twitter and social networks, where we saw videos of the police repression, and so we went into the streets in response. May 17 is when the camp began to be built; it was on that day that Sol turned into an agora. I remember I began to imagine what a Greek agora might have been like. Then people there were talking, talking all the time, conversations, reflections … I walked alone through the square and saw lots of beautiful things happening. I stayed, talking with people for over an hour and a half, not even knowing their names. We all stayed and talked about things we had been thinking alone in our bedrooms, individually. It was hard to leave the square that day, and the next day I had to go to work early—yet it was three o’clock in the morning, and I couldn’t tear myself away. I kept trying to leave the plaza, saying, “I need to go, I need to go,” and something always happened that kept me there.
After the first night I went again every single day. The following day I was counting the seconds until work finished so I could go to Sol. When I arrived on Wednesday [May 18], I remember walking around and I saw a very young kid with a piece of cardboard with the word, “Reflection.” I asked: “What’s this?” “We are the reflection group,” came the reply. And I said, “But what do you do?” “We have decided that we’re going to think together about everything that is going on since it is so incredible.” Then I said, “This is my place.” And I turned to my friend and said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to stay here.” She went off to some other thing, and after that I started to collaborate with the reflection group.
In the first days we organized working groups to respond to basic needs, such as infrastructure, food, security, and legal advice. Then we started to organize things like a library, a school for children, translation, and the dynamics of assembly meetings—and from there we moved to organizing groups around spirituality, understanding, peace and love. In every group there was feminism, sexual diversity, and different abilities, so that everyone has a place, according to our principles of respect, horizontality, etc.
Hundreds of new things were being created and developed all the time! I remember one day I came and someone said, “We’ve made a vegetable patch!” and I said, “A vegetable patch? In the fountain?” Then suddenly there was a day-care center, a library … it was fascinating. There was a constructive atmosphere in which you could create things—creating, creating—and everything you wanted to do was possible. But we also felt the need to stop and say, “What is this?” And through the pathways, the streets of the mini-city, you hear that people are thinking, reflecting, and questioning: “And what is this?” “I don’t know” … And so we created the intentional spaces for thought, to think about what this is and might mean.
Amador Fernández Savater, a thirty-eight-year-old journalist, editor, and philosopher, is a prominent movement participant in Madrid. His writings are followed by many in the movement. Ironically, he is the son of Fernando Savater, Spain’s most prominent liberal philosopher, who publicly attacked both the 15-M and his own son.
Amador, 15-M, Madrid: The most important thing about what happened during the encampment is the creation of spaces for everyone—not for activists, not for radicals, not for anti-capitalists, but spaces where difference is respected. A common spirit prevailed in the fact that we all needed to not just take care of speech or organizational issues, but to make it a space that would be attractive to everyone. There was a children’s day-care center, so that implied that we were expecting parents with children to come, or the elders. The moment they came, we gave them a chair so that they could attend the assembly and stay there for long periods of time; or people gave you sun block when it was needed. That is to say that democracy shouldn’t just be something about the assembly, with formal things, with organizational issues, but is something in concrete space, and is a set of practices that maintain an open space for anyone—regardless of their physical condition or class origin—who, beyond ideology, could participate and [where] we could meet with each other.
Eva, Cine sin Autor, Madrid: I have a lot of friends who were close to politically involved people, but were not politically involved themselves. With the 15-M, they became politically radicalized. It comes to mind that many of those people—those who used to put up stupid things on Facebook—suddenly started to post political and economic opinions, things about the management of power … Another thing that probably will stay for good is that sensation that comes from being nobody, the person no one ever paid attention to, then becoming someone that has been listened to by 6,000 people—that you have had your opinion heard in front of 6,000 silent people. That sensation of empowerment will hardly go away. It was an experience lived by many people. Switching from absolute nothingness, from a feeling of powerlessness over one’s own life, even day-to-day, to this sense of empowerment—I think it will remain with us.
All over the world, where mass assemblies have been formed and direct democracy experimented with, movement participants are inventing ways for more people to participate, communicate, and create deeper forms of democracy together. In Spain, particularly in Puerta del Sol, this process was reflected on extensively, and attempts are regularly made to refine it.
Ayelen, 15-M, Madrid: I conceive of general assemblies as human places for encounter, debate, information, reflection, and decision-making. Depending on what is being discussed, mechanisms are defined promoting horizontality, where everybody has the same right to speak, and respect and tolerance are promoted. For an assembly along these lines to make sense, every difference must be welcome. I’m not afraid of conflict, discussion, or even disagreeing, as long as we are clear that what really matters is for us to disagree together. If that is clear, I will spend all the time necessary debating with you.
Collective thinking is not that everybody is thinking different things and we just join it all together. It must be something built together from the start, something that previously did not exist that has to be created. It doesn’t consist in convincing, but building. It breaks down the concept of competition. It is very important to notice that maybe the person that says something similar to the final result contributes a lot, and so does another that says exactly the opposite, because it’s their opinion that sparks your different idea.
We are reflecting all the time about how to improve our techniques, because an assembly in which everyone has the right to talk doesn’t guarantee that everybody will feel free to talk. For example, affirmation is very influential, so it is the responsibility of the collective to give confidence to everyone, so that they feel encouraged to talk. It is important to notice how the collective reacts, and that has a direct influence on building true freedom of expression, freedom to speak. There are also group dynamics where implicit leaderships are generated. It’s OK if the person that knows most about certain things can talk and say what they have to say, but it’s also necessary that the rest can speak, too, in order to break the delegation of power that generates vertical structures. When we practice the horizontal power structure, we are all using our power, but internally there are still mechanisms of delegation—the idea that other people must know more than us, or that we are afraid of making some mistake, and that means I’m uncertain to talk about certain things. I’m in love with horizontality, but am also thinking about goals for improving it. What we saw in horizontality was that, if assembly meetings are fifteen hours long, one gets exhausted, decisions end up being taken by fatigue, and are taken by the ones that resisted until the end, and it becomes vertical again.
Comrades that were focused on resolving conflicts, or on being intermediaries with police or whatever, they weren’t called “security”—they were called “respect.” First they were called “defense,” because it was necessary to defend us from police that came to attack us; then “security” because it should be necessary to take care of camp tents, computers; and then their name was changed on the third day into “respect.”
The main issues in the general assembly were proposals by working groups, because there was an invitation to everyone who wanted to participate to find the right group. At the end of assemblies, there was always an open mic, and one could make a proposal, a new group, or raise a question for later.
In the beginning assemblies were attended by about 3,000 or 4,000 people. By the third day the assembly was organized with security pathways for people to walk on if they wanted, with intentionally made shade, with water being sprayed on us because it was hot, with people giving out sunscreen to protect us from the sun, every two or three hours distributing fruits or snacks for people to eat. And then there were all the dynamics teams and the sign language teams … In one of those assemblies, suddenly the assembly stops in a serious moment and someone says: “We have seen that there is a pregnant woman here, so we have a chair for her to sit down. Where is she?” In the middle of 3,000 people everything stops for one person to take care of her. Those that took charge of infrastructure were there, waiting on whatever might be needed.
Ana, Observatorio Metropolitano, Madrid: Hand signals are used in almost the same way in the encampments and occupations around the world, but there is one we use in Spain that I don’t think others use, which is also very useful, which is, “I don’t see it, but I don’t block it.” That is one where you put your hands in front of your eyes … it’s different from “I disagree”—the one of crossing hands, that is for blocking ideas. But “I don’t see it, but I don’t block it,” means that I’m not convinced but I won’t say no or try and stop the process either.
Pablo García, twenty-nine, is a PhD student in ecology. Pablo participated in the 15-M in Madrid, moved to the US for a semester, participated in Occupy Mount Desert Island in Maine, and then continued his studies at the University of Thessaloniki in Greece, taking part in the local movements there.
Pablo, 15-M, Madrid: In the first days of the mass assemblies, the open mic technique was used, and people just let go and talked and talked. It’s necessary to understand that people needed to talk, but at the same time we saw the need to structure things. This is done through facilitation. For example, facilitators can help gather together various ideas, sometimes putting people together with similar ideas so they can structure their ideas, and then those ideas could be collectively improved on, and then brought back even more clearly to the collective. It’s very effective, and I’ve seen it in Sol, I’ve seen it in Occupy Wall Street, and in Mount Desert Island—the same method and process, with the same effect on people, and how those people fall in love with it.
Amador, 15-M, Madrid: Rejection of the majority–minority game often took us to unanimous consensus, which neither seems to me to be the most efficient nor smartest approach. Unanimous consensus allowed a single person to block agreements. That seems excessive to me. It’s one thing to incorporate dissenting voices, and another to give one person a right to block everything, because that could easily become manipulation. But the most important thing is to refuse the majority–minority game—the idea that when you vote there are others who are more right because there are more of them than you.
Ayelen, 15-M, Madrid: From the beginning, unanimous consensus was instituted in a natural, spontaneous form, and we couldn’t depart from that unanimous consensus because we had the assembly working in that way, and we couldn’t find a way or process to break the unanimous consensus. One example of how it was a challenge was with a proposal put forward by the education working group. They suggested we agree that education should be public, free, of good quality, and secular. Almost everybody said yes with their hands [twinkling] except for just one person, who vetoed the proposal that it should be secular. So, that proposal was vetoed. Consensus is a beautiful idea, but up to what point can it be sustained and allow that a democracy can be at the same time something agile, dynamic, flexible, and not an endless, clumsy bureaucracy that doesn’t move forward and doesn’t make decisions.
There were tons of working groups that proposed other mechanisms. Then came the quality-consensus … The idea was we collect all dissent, we add them to the act, and state that the consensus be by an 80 percent and the other 20 percent has been thinking about this. But that was impossible to pass because, in the end, what we were proposing was to break the unanimous consensus—and since we were working by unanimous consensus, there was always someone who disagreed. That paralyzed us so much, weakened us, and it taught us a lot—but we couldn’t resolve it.
The composition of the 15-M was something the media continually attempted to caricature, depicting it as either a bunch of lost young people or a pre-organized group on the left. What the participants stress is that it was neither only young people nor only older people, neither left nor right, but was instead a coming together of a diverse group of people without predetermined ideologies, inventing something new. There were many challenges with regard to participation and diversity, such as the participation of immigrants, as discussed at the end of this section.
Aitor, ¡Democracia Real Ya!, Barcelona: In the beginning they were saying about us, “It’s a movement of young people”—but that’s wrong. Our movement has always incorporated youth, middle-aged people, young families, etc. This movement is totally trans-generational, because all are hit by the crisis.
The driving force of this is what the movement says about itself: inclusion, respect, horizontality, etc. There were also some people who had their convictions, their minds armored against any novelty that this movement could bring. I remember an assembly in which there was a group that pushed hard for the banner that we were going to take to the rally to carry the slogan “Down with Capitalism!” I might be against capitalism, but to me that banner was a big mistake. That couldn’t be our identity in the beginning. Concrete issues needed to be specified, and then we had to build concrete practices that went beyond capitalism, to build other ways of life, but not announce them rhetorically, because this would only cause divisions.
Ayelen, 15-M, Madrid: For many years I didn’t attend rallies because I didn’t believe in the traditional way of rallying. I felt that it was an escape valve for us to calm our conscience and for the pressure cooker not to explode. But 15-M attracted me with the slogan “Real Democracy Now!” because it was the first time that I had heard anyone question democracy. In Spain the “No War!” movement occurred, and was a big, big mobilization, but it never questioned structural issues. When I see that slogan “Real Democracy Now!” I feel that it’s questioning something that was institutionally deeply rooted. This is what attracted me to go to the 15-M mobilization. I said, “This is different.” And when I arrived at the plaza it was shocking, because it was a different environment indeed—a lot of different people, very diverse, and a way of speaking that I was able to identify with.
Amador, 15-M, Madrid: The assembly form in [Puerta del] Sol used a unanimous consensus form of decision-making. It was an impossible miracle—a very nice thing that showed that we could come together. The power is that we can be together, and not let ourselves get divided into factions. The aim is for us to be an unrecognizable movement, so that they cannot say: “There are the leftist ones, or the radicals, or those anti-systemic ones, or the punk-occupy ones.” Here we are the people, a little bit of everything, and that’s the force it has had, and the joy of finding all kinds of people. The space is opened, but not in just any manner: the space is open under certain slogans. 15-M’s force, in general, is that it communicates universal messages, so that many people can relate to it. The Slogans are: “Real Democracy Now!”; “You don’t represent us”; “You call it democracy and [it] is not”; and “We won’t pay for this crisis.” Everyone can feel involved through these slogans. First, it is a rejection of what democracy is or looks like. There were a lot of people, and many supporters, and many provided meals, but it was not all the people of Madrid here. The only ones helping were those who felt attracted by these slogans, though we didn’t know exactly what they meant. These were open questions.
Aitor, ¡Democracia Real Ya!, Barcelona: One of our weak points is the question of immigrants. This is a “white” revolution: we haven’t been able to integrate immigrants very well. The [PAH] is different, however. Why? Because, in the end, immigrants have been the people most affected—often they have been tricked into bad mortgages, and now they are the first to lose their homes. Immigrants have to fight for recognition of their rights as citizens, and direct participation—things that the current political status quo rejects. We haven’t been able to create that shared imaginary with them, no matter how much our convictions might be shared.
Ayelen, 15-M, Madrid: There were immigrants who participated. But there’s the question of legal fear. We were all identified by the police, we were all very visible, and immigrants were obviously afraid of repression. I’ve seen many Argentines, but for sure, Argentines are more integrated into Spanish culture, and they also tend to be more secure in their legal status. Immigrants have been treated so badly here, so to ask them to identify with the Spanish people is like a bad joke. We had to demonstrate that we were practicing a different type of Spanish citizenship. In Sol there was a working group on immigration, and in a week it was able to bring together more than a hundred immigrants’ associations from Madrid, but that is not the same as direct participation in Sol.
What inclusive meant in practice was hard sometimes. For example, on the first day of the encampment, feminists hung up a banner that in my personal opinion was a little provocative: “Revolution will be feminist, or won’t happen.” That is not inclusive. You are throwing out the person who by consciousness or by ignorance does not identify with that. These people didn’t stay silent, and I think it’s wonderful because, taking into account that movements and rallies have always been full of the most familiar discourse, the general anonymous voice had never really appeared. First we tried to negotiate with the women who hung up the banner, and proposed adding the word “also,” so it became “Revolution will also be feminist or won’t happen.” They didn’t accept it, so it was removed.
A conscious decision was made in Madrid to no longer occupy Puerta del Sol, and instead re-territorialize to the neighborhoods. As in Greece, the movement found that more concrete work could be done from the areas where people lived, worked, studied, and built their everyday relationships. This phenomenon of neighborhood assemblies had already developed in dozens of towns and villages throughout the country, inspired by Puerta del Sol and Plaça de Catalunya.
Luis, 15-M, Madrid: For the movement to be real-life, and everyday life to be the movement, it has to intersect with people’s lives. The problem with activism is that it puts on social events and people don’t go. The issue is to understand that the movement could be of the people and our quotidian life, then to turn politics into something that is very important in terms of friendship, affinity, family—things that in Spain are extremely important—to politicize those relationships, and to learn that this is politics, too.
One important path for getting here has been to move from the plazas to the neighborhoods. In some neighborhoods it has worked pretty well, and in others it has not. I don’t know if the neighborhood assembly is too artificial a structure. Surely the big movement assemblies are, since they are not able to bring the movement into everyday life. In the neighborhoods I think it works better, because there is a base with what people have in common, and it is on the micro-level with everyday life; we can put more issues on the table, like jobs, housing. The big 15-M assemblies are more like ceremonies, to be together for a period of time, but they do not have influence on the reality of things we need in the day-to-day.
Begonia, 15-M, Madrid: One cultural element in Spanish life that has been helpful for the movement is that the plazas worked well because in the squares it’s easy to integrate everything into everyday life. The elderly have walks in the afternoons, they cross through the squares—and the youth are there, too. For the Spanish it’s a really important meeting and social place—its spontaneous, a place where you don’t need to have an appointment, where networks are built.
Elena, a university student in her early twenties, had no prior activism, and got involved with the 15-M in the main Plaza of Sol. She is now active in the Austrias neighborhood assembly in the La Latina neighborhood of Madrid.
Elena, 15-M, Madrid: In Sol, when the encampment was still there, a list was hung up that specified in which square of every neighborhood the assemblies would take place, and from there people began to go to their area’s plaza.
I think that has been very important, because the social fabric in the neighborhoods was totally destroyed. For example, during the 1970s neighborhood associations were very important in Madrid, but then they were all defeated, absorbed by political parties, and within the neighborhoods it was not very organized. For sure in neighborhoods such as la Latina, basically a nightlife neighborhood, the situation was different, and then, suddenly, they started to join us in the square every Saturday, talking about politics with people of all ages who did not know one another, and that is amazing.
I have learned a lot about how beautiful it is to learn together, and from everyone, especially other generations, those who participated in older struggles, who tell you about their experiences, or how they are taking all this newness in, how they view the movement and what they think is most important. These relationships to me are an amazing advance.
On a more practical level, what was done from the beginning was to organize in working groups. The weekly assembly is for everyone, and then during the week the working groups meet and each person decides what group they want to be a part of in a sort of day-to-day way. It started in Sol with 25,000 working groups for everything, from education, feminism, the environment, road infrastructure—every single kind of working group. And well, all that has become less important, and in our case, in our neighborhood, there are two groups that are especially strong—politics and economy, and arts and culture. These are the two groups with most people, that every week do things and formulate proposals for activities.
At the first neighborhood assemblies I counted 150 people, maybe even 200. There were some, in the more politically involved neighborhoods like Vallecas, that had lots of people, and still have, but in general the number has fallen. For us during the winter and on any Saturday of the year, it is normal for assemblies to be attended by thirty to thirty-five people. What happens is that, if there is not a specific activity being discussed, not everything happens at only the assembly meetings, because people are in touch through email lists, Facebook, and Twitter. There you can organize, keep informed about what assemblies are doing. Resolutions and agreements that have been reached are posted, and you can also stay in touch with the surrounding neighborhoods’ assemblies this way. The idea is to work in the neighborhood, to make things better in it, and to create a neighbors’ network.
Ayelen, 15-M, Madrid: In Madrid alone, there were more than a hundred neighborhood assemblies. I don’t know how many are still there. Some have disappeared, and clearly the number of people actively participating has decreased, but there are things that emerged from the neighborhoods that still remain—occupy actions, vegetable gardens, time banks—and importantly stronger relationships among neighbors. It has been a kind of explosion or rediscovery of what participation can be.
Some neighborhood assemblies were absorbed by traditional movements, and got bureaucratized. In other neighborhoods there was a true development and explosion of leadership, with many people creating things. There are neighborhoods that have fomented affinity groups, and some that are really humanizing their surroundings, meaning people have become more social, more human with one another, doing things like greeting one another on the street when they didn’t before, or having beer together.
One of the typical criticisms made of the neighborhood assemblies is that they are focusing too much on the local scene. They are very neighborhood-centered, and lose a global perspective. I think both things are necessary. It’s great to have people doing things at a local level, recovering the relationships in the neighborhood, but it’s necessary not to lose the global view of what we have in common.
One of the strongest and most generalized of the movements to deepen due to the 15-M was the anti-foreclosure movement. Since 2011, the number of participants has increased exponentially, and the contagion effect has been tremendous—both in Spain and around the world, with movement participants from the US, Greece, and other parts of Europe coming to learn directly from the PAH as well as Skyping and corresponding to learn tactics and share lessons.
Ernest, PAH, Barcelona: The Platform started three years ago, and it was in part a collective venture between people from a previous network who used to work in social rights offices with immigrants from the social center Ateneo Candela—people who had labor problems and problems with housing rights. At the end of 2008, many unemployed people who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments began to come. Interest rates started to rise. People started to see that what they had signed up for was crazy, and began to realize that they had been swindled in many situations. Given that context, it was something new for us, who in Barcelona started to dialogue with people of the V [Vivienda, or “Living”] movement.
We began to discuss the situation, together with lawyers, to figure out what the situation was and how we could socially intervene. And the Platform for those Affected by Mortgages was born in February 2009. The Platform is a pre-15-M movement, but it was given impetus by the 15-M. It is one of the suggestions for organizing for many neighborhood assemblies, and encampments of the 15-M movement. After they left the squares they didn’t have a clear idea of where to go. Before the 15-M there was an assembly of the Barcelona Platform, and another in Terraza, and after the 15-M, in just a short period of time, forty-four Platforms were created across Spain.11 In addition to this, we need to take into account the fact that there are many city-based assemblies that don’t call themselves “affected by mortgages,” but that are fighting foreclosures in the same way, and are also dedicated to blocking eviction attempts for some families. In other words, there are forty-four Platforms, plus other neighborhood assemblies, that have the same action guidelines. They give them some kind of counseling or they bring them to the Platform, but above all, when there are announcements of foreclosures like this next Monday in their neighborhood, they get active and call the neighborhood together so that they can all go to prevent it, knocking on doors to mobilize people to prevent the foreclosure from occurring …
According to the available data for the second trimester of 2012, issued by the General Council of Judicial Power (CGPJ), the number of foreclosures in Spain has increased, and has now reached an average of 532 per day. Nevertheless, what we observe is that families that take part in the PAHs are organized, with more experience, and now there’s more PAHs in the territory—more than seventy. For instance, many banks are giving up because of the pressure put on them by many families, and accepting restructuring or forgiving of debts. As a result, what we can see is that, from data from the CGPJ, now we have to stop much fewer evictions than in the past year, because we are achieving more victories, with regard to the families that take part in the PAH, and starting new negotiations. With respect to us, we have started to negotiate collectively—not individually, as in the past—with banks’ central headquarters, instead of local branches, since directors of branches don’t have enough real power when managing these types of situations, and linking families to the bank in which they have their mortgages, to pressure them more.
Ernest, PAH, Barcelona: What we do is divide families into two groups. One is for the people that come for the first time, that don’t know anything about the Platform. In this group of people we give an introduction to the main activities of the Platform—what we can do and what we cannot do, to inform them a bit, not to create false expectations, nor to allow them to believe that we will ask them for money, because there has been a lot of fraud with this issue. People are desperate, and there are lots of lawyers taking advantage of that and defrauding them, so it’s difficult to gain people’s trust. Our activity is prominently political, and besides, it is the only way for them to get something. And then there is the second group, for whom this is the second assembly they attend, in which they fill in a kind of survey we have designed, and with that survey they can locate easily on a map at what point of the foreclosure process they are. Because then you can carry out different activities designed to pressure the bank, the administration, social services, the judge, etc. Then they locate the point they are [at], and decide what action to take. And then there’s the issue of the community, saying, “Well, I want to do this, I want to go to the bank to deliver this letter, I want you to come help me.” And there is also a theater company that offers to put on shows to pressure institutions to receive people. Then they carry out some activities specially designed according to the person’s situation, and then the last link of the chain, in case we didn’t achieve anything from this, takes place the day of the eviction. This is the most media-covered moment, but is also true that for many families it doesn’t come to this, because many victories are won—many people, with the help of social pressure, get a re-evaluation of their financial obligations. That’s our main demand—it consists of the bank accepting their rights to the property and cancelling the debt. Assemblies last long enough—around four hours. We provide tools and counseling about what to do, and, above all, turn individual cases into something more collective.
Christina, a forty-eight-year-old single mother, first became active with the 15-M encampment in Lanzarote, Canary Islands. She was evicted for not being able to pay her mortgage and is now occupying a home with her daughter. She is one of the founders of the PAH Lanzarote.
Christina, PAH, Lanzarote: There are no hierarchies. They don’t exist. But it is not that they don’t exist because someone suggested it, but because it is a space where each person becomes the owner of their life and everyone has every opportunity. If we are all in control of our lives and we have all the opportunities, there is no desire for someone to come and tell you what to do. The objective is that you have all the tools, all the capacity and opportunity to seek freedom and the freedom of all—so of course, hierarchy does not fit, and we don’t feel it, or want it ever.
Ernest, PAH, Barcelona: We need to be capable of winning, because if not, people will believe that mobilizations in themselves do not resolve anything. Now, with the 15-M, this is the big challenge. In that sense, with the example of the Platform of those Affected by Mortgages, for example, it has that virtue of having two levels of struggle: one, in the short term, which has weekly victories, since every week there are evictions of people of the Platform, and people organize in the neighborhoods in a peaceful way, but convincingly enough they confront police and the bank officers, allowing the family to keep on living there; but on the other hand there’s a more long-term objective, harder to achieve, which is a change of the current mortgage law, and [a fight] for some specific rights for the home occupier in these cases. To win something every week or every fortnight gives people hope, and a reason to participate.
Ernest, PAH, Barcelona: With the Platform, what we focused on first was to visualize forms of resistance—to preview, in a moment of economic crisis, that families could guarantee housing rights, that they remained housed—because the problem in Spain is not one of supply. There are around 5 million empty properties; it’s a problem of housing access.
The mortgage issue is very public. People see it in the press, then come with enough force to fight. Before the 15-M we often formed assemblies of just three or four people, and now we are more or less fifty families. Lots of people stayed at the entrance of the social center and didn’t enter, because they were ashamed to recognize they suffer this problem. It was very socially stigmatized. And also in those spaces there are bio-political elements of the people that are crying with shame when they enter, that find it difficult to talk. In that way they receive support from the people who empower them, and they leave the assemblies with enough force, energy, and dignity to go to the bank and say to the director what they want to say, to organize actions like being at the entrance of the bank premises every single day, telling other clients what the bank is doing, etc., so that they can get their first payment.
Thus, at that point there wasn’t any social debate about this issue—it was just like a drama of what happened in Spain, which in fact is very important, because from 2007, when the housing bubble burst, until now, according to data from the Judicial Power General Council, a sort of official database, there have been more than 314,000 foreclosures, and if in every [one] of those foreclosures there’s a family, we’re talking about millions of people that are now out on the streets, dispossessed and with a lifetime of debt.
Christina, PAH, Lanzarote: I was born in the 15-M. My daughter and I were part of the encampment here, and for me there was a before and an after. And yes, I fight now for my house and the issue of housing because I had participated in the 15-M, clearly. It was because of this I fought and knew to call the PAH and see how to set up a group here in Lanzarote. When we first started organizing, people in the town came up to me all the time and said, “we don’t do that here, we don’t protest” and, well, now we do.
Ernest, PAH, Barcelona: The Platform is also a very mixed space—a major part of the movement is made up of women. There are many immigrant women, and the other half are native. There are more women because, while the economic crisis has affected men and men’s salaries most, what happened was that most of them got depressed or became alcoholic, and are too ashamed to declare their problems publicly. This is a situation in which women take control and fight day and night, taking care of children and participating in the assemblies. The large amount of immigrant participation has many explanations. Ten years ago in Spain there was a lot of credit available for buying property—there were fiscal obligations. In Spain leases are expensive, scarce, and poor quality. In addition, you would always worry about if something went wrong, you could lose your property, and that the house will always increase in price. When the housing bubble burst, many native families, instead of organizing and struggling to change their situation, what they did is ask for family savings, family, networks of friends who might be willing to lend them money, or house them in their homes. Immigrants, on the other hand, are alone. For that reason the only choice they have is to fight.
From the Platform we always speak about Real Democracy Now! The people from the Platform go to their assembly meetings, to help provide solutions to their problems, and fight for other people in the same situation, too. In the 1990s we would talk about trying to create a kind of umbrella that might group together both immigrants and natives, to find common causes both could fight for. But now that is taken more or less as read, and native people, even some that are racists, who have troubles with their mortgages, they go to all the evictions of immigrants, creating a kind of novel relationship. Suddenly people don’t talk about if you’re foreign or a native, but they talk about the problem, and counsel and help each other …
The incredible and exciting thing is the solidarity among people. In Catalonia, for example, there are around seventeen or eighteen Platforms, and the entire state is … the community with the most Platforms. And when there’s a foreclosure here in Barcelona, people come from cities 200 to 250 kilometers away—they come at 7 a.m. to support their comrades, including people with their problems already resolved, families that are in the housing problem and neighbors’ associations. That is something in which we work. We have a girl who is a lawyer that has taught us within the Platform about this issue, and who is in charge of going to different neighbors’ associations of Barcelona, to put on instructional workshops for the neighbors and also provide counseling to people in their neighborhoods.
Ana, Observatorio Metropolitano, Madrid: It’s necessary that this atmosphere we created of “this is not democracy” focus on more concrete actions. We don’t know for certain up to what point the assemblies can really be the thing to channel that, or whether it should be all these diffuse satellite groups.
In contrast to the media reporting the end of the movement every few weeks, the participants on the ground are convinced that the huge mobilizations were just the beginning of much bigger movements to come. Gerardo, who works constantly in close contact with working-class people in popular neighborhoods of Madrid, is convinced that now the social fabric that was totally broken is starting to be fixed, to create a real organization, and to have power that transforms it. I think we are preparing for a long period, though at the same time things look like they could move quickly. Sometimes I think that a big move of social uprising could happen, greater than the one that already happened.
Luis, 15-M, Madrid: People have said many times that the 15-M was dead, but there are always things going on.
The squares had the quality of being a small place of commons, organizing resources in common. It had the idea of autonomy—a little island in which we would try out how we want to live in common. But that can happen only for some time. So in Spain the move to the neighborhoods happened. But people saw also that it is very difficult to work in the neighborhoods. Now the big thing in Spain is mainly to recuperate the institutions of the welfare state, the public institutions, schools, and hospitals. These are very interesting movements now. They are called “tides”—the green tide is about education, the white tide is around health, and there are many others, but these two are the most important. It is very interesting, because these movements somehow have the DNA of the 15-M but are a different thing. They could not have happened that way without the 15-M. They are not 15-M, not the squares—they are new, but have the flavor and the characteristics of 15-M, like horizontality, working in networks, not necessarily having the same ideology but being very practical …
Sometimes it is difficult to point at concrete results, but there are effects. We have a specific political climate. There is still a big feeling of opportunity and openness—everything could happen. The institutions are falling apart. The political climate is characterized by the terms the 15-M put forward. Because, alternatively we could have a mood of resignation, like, “Well, there will be other governments and they will be corrupt again …”
1 Referring to Stéphane Hessel’s book Time for Outrage: Indignez-vous! (New York: Twelve, 2011).
2 Ernesto Castañeda, “The Indignados of Spain: A Precedent to Occupy Wall Street,” Social Movement Studies 11: 3–4 (2012), pp. 309–19.
3 This phenomenon is central to the description of all participants interviewed. See also Mayo Fuster Morell, “The Free Culture and 15-M Movements in Spain: Composition, Social Networks and Synergies,” Social Movement Studies 11: 3–4 (2012), pp. 386–92.
4 Neil Hughes, “Young People Took to the Streets and All of a Sudden All of the Political Parties Got Old: The 15-M Movement in Spain,” Social Movement Studies 10: 4 (2011), pp. 407–13.
5 Amador Fernández Savater, thirty-eight—journalist, editor, philosopher, 15-M, Madrid, author interview, January 9, 2012.
6 Miriam Calavia, “El PSOE pierde casi tantos votos como parados tiene España,” Cinco Días, November 21, 2011.
7 Fernando Garea, “El 95% asegura que los partidos protegen y amparan a los acusados de corrupción,” El País, January 12, 2013.
8 “Spanish PM Makes Debt Crisis U-Turn with Emergency Cuts,” Guardian, May 12, 2010; “El Gobierno congela el salario de los funcionarios en 2012 y amplía su jornada laboral,” RTVE, December 30, 2011.
9 “Sanidad tendrá un recorte de 7.000 millones y Educación de 3.000,” El Mundo, April 9, 2012.
10 People are considered to be living in poverty in Spain when their income is lower than 60 percent of the average annual income. For a single adult, this means that the poverty level is an annual income of €7,300. Jaime Prats, “Más desigualdad, más miseria,” El País, March 30, 2013.
11 By the November 2013 Malaga gathering of PAH groups across Spain, this number was 150.