Environmental Protest Cases: The City, The Countryside, and The Grassroots in Southern Europe

Abstract

Systematic cross-national analysis of environmental activism in urban and rural communities is nonexistent for Southern Europe. This article uses protest-case analysis to trace local environmental protest cases (not events) of urban and rural communities in Greece, Spain, and Portugal from the end of their dictatorial periods in the 1970s until 1994. The findings show a convergence between urban and rural environmental claims and protest actions, especially in the later period. Rural groups are more limited in terms of their social networks, and are less numerous than urban ones. A critical development during the twenty-year period is the emergence of a small but potent minority of urban and rural protesters. Findings show that they are (1) extensive and heterogeneous in terms of networks and claims, and (2) numerous and intensive in terms of collective action participation.