15M Movement Research Articles

Eurocommunism’s contribution to the idea of ???democracy without qualifying adjectives???

Óscar García Agustín talks to Gaspar Llamazares Gaspar Llamazares joined the Communist Party of Asturias in 1981. Between 2000 and 2008 he was the national coordinator of Izquierda Unida (United Left). In response to the rise of the 15M movement, he and others founded Izquierda Abierta (Open Left), with the aim of building a larger progressive coalition. The party remained within Izquierda Unida, but aimed to counteract the weight of the Communist Party within the coalition. In 2017 he co-founded the political platform Act??a (Do it) to give voice to those who did not feel represented by PSOE and Podemos. In 2019, he left Izquierda Unida. In 2023 he was elected as a member of the Oviedo council, representing the electoral coalition Convocatoria por Oviedo, and nowadays he is spokesperson for the coalition. He has written extensively about the left and is a defender of the legacy of Eurocommunism, understood as the defence of socialism and pluralism within the political and parliamentary system established during the Spanish Transition, and as the formation of a large progressive coalition to gradually change the capitalist system.

Public, libre, commons: On the logics, logistics and locations of democratic participation in the digital age

This paper tells the story of Decide Madrid (Decide), a civic tech platform designed by Madrid’s municipality in 2015 in the spirit of the autonomous and hacker philosophies that spearheaded the Spanish Occupy or 15M movement. We develop a biographical account of Decide to show how the design of the platform was modified over the course of four years to accommodate shifting ideas of how digital infrastructures can channel, both online and offline, the social energies and technical rationalities of political participation. In particular, we identify three design assemblages of democratic participation: the public, the libre and the commons, whose orientations and configurations sometimes share, and sometimes diffract, different logics, logistics and locations of where and how democracy ought to be activated in the digital age. We further show how over time these modulations cultivated a view of democratic culture as an experimental process.

Reconsidering social movement impact on democracy: the case of Spain’s 15-M movement

ABSTRACT Social movement impact on democracy has primarily been treated in two ways in the literature: the role of social movements in promoting democratization in the form of regime change; and a more recent literature on the ways social movements initiate democratic innovation in governing institutions and norm diffusion in already existing democracy. In this article, we argue that to fully understand social movement impact on democracy, we need to look beyond these two main approaches, as important as they are. Using the emblematic case of Spain’s 15-M pro-democracy movement to illustrate our conceptual proposal, we draw on existing literature to argue that social movements can impact democracy in several key arenas currently not sufficiently considered in the literature. We provide examples of democratic impact emerging from the experimentation around the central problematic of ‘real democracy’ in the ‘occupied squares’ to highlight several ways social movements’ democratic impact might be explored. We develop the concepts of hybridity and democratic laboratory to analyze these impacts and discuss their relation to contemporary theorizing about democracy and movement outcomes. We argue that adopting this broader approach to the democratic impact of social movements leads to a more nuanced understanding of movement outcomes and ‘success’.

Informative architectures and citizen participation: a comparative study between the digital platforms Decidim and Rousseauv

To what extent does the way in which digital platforms are organized favor citizen participation? This article looks at this question using a comparative study between two digital informative architectures: the Five Star Movement’s (originally in Italian “Movimento 5 Stelle”) Rousseau platform in Italy, and the Decidim platform, developed after the 15M movement in Spain by a collaboration of entities from different countries. From a qualitative analysis of its architectures – in accordance with an approach based mainly on communication theory – we sought to investigate and describe the ways in which information circulates and operates, and the possibilities they offer for democratic actions. This was accomplished by analyzing two aspects of the platform: 1) the conception and development of codes; 2) the functions that the platform offers and its interaction with users. In this paper, we start from the central hypothesis that the communication conditions act as a base for the quality and levels of participation. Just as more verticalized communicative structures (such as those of traditional mass media) tend to concentrate decision-making processes and power, more horizontalized structures end up favoring more collaborative and democratic actions: thus, we aimed to verify the extent to which the modes of elaboration and organization of information on these platforms, operating in digital network contexts, enable broad and effective modalities of citizen action

15-M movement and feminist economics: an insight into the dialogues between social movements and academia in Spain

ABSTRACT This paper explores the relationship between the articulation of the 15-M movement in Spain and the expansion of Feminist Economics (FE) at the feminist base of this movement, in particular, in Feminism Committees (FC-15 M). We assert that this expansion was due to FE’s capacity to explain the 2008 crisis beyond its economic-financial dimensions and to analyse the effects of the political-economic austerity measures on the sustainability of life. We claim that a differentiating feature of FE in Spain is its permeability to dialogue with social movements. Therefore, it has become more politicized and critical than other academic fields. This influence has also been reflected in the structure and contents of the most recent FE national conferences, which from 2013 on included not only the classic academic strand but also training and political action strands. In order to explore this development, our methodology includes interviews with key informants; document analysis of material generated in the conferences and the Feminism Committees of 15-M; questionnaires to activists, academics, and practitioners of FE; and informal observation as direct participants of the described processes and events. The paper begins with an introduction to FE thought and its connections with so-called ‘Feminism for the 99%’ and continues with a methodological section. The twofold results section analyzes the dialogues between FE and FC-15 M. It concludes with a summary of the key ideas presented and some final remarks.

Questioning European Democracy? Versions of Representation in the 15M Movement and Podemos

ABSTRACT In the wake of the social movement mobilization after the 2008 financial crisis in Spain, many would like to argue that this has given rise to a new wave of left-wing political representation, such as the party Podemos. Left-wing populism is often seen as the natural continuation of protest movements and hailed as reinvigorating democracy by creating new forms of representation for the previously unrepresented. This article argues that the political subjectivity espoused by Podemos hails from a long European tradition built on rationality, masculinity, and nationalism. In opposition, the political subjectivities practiced by the many branches of the 15M provide a more novel critique of the European democratic system. The article questions the claims to democratic innovation by Podemos, and argues that without a closer engagement with how current party practices reinforce different forms of exclusion, the democratic promise of left-wing populism may be weaker than previously thought.

The 15M, Podemos and the Long Crisis in Spain: Gramscian Perspectives

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze the 15M movement and its outcomes through Gramscian lenses. The 15M expressed a crisis of ruling class hegemony based on a crisis of political representation. It was a moment of collective splintering and political subjectivation. Viewed from Gramsci’s distinction between small and big politics, the 15M marked the beginning of a phase in which big politics ceased to be the exclusive prerogative of the dominant classes and shifted towards subaltern groups. The sequence from 15M to Podemos can be analyzed as a cathartic moment in the Gramscian sense of the term and can also be read with the help of his concept of translation. Discussing Machiavelli’s work, Gramsci defined the party as a modern Prince. However, the conception of the party that prevailed in Podemos is narrower than that of Gramsci. His concept of transformism is useful to analyze Podemos’ strategic evolution.

Outcomes of Democratic Innovations: Horizontalism as Inclusive Participation Spillover, but Fragile under Hierarchical Attacks

Anti-austerity protests revived anti- and post-hegemonic sociopolitical imaginary, around the word. In Spain, 15M movement built the premises for political projects based on direct democracy and horizontal models of social organization, as defining features of the new muncipalists who won 2015 elections in several cities. The case of Madrid has revelatory value in the debate regarding outcomes of participatory innovations, as the alliance which pioneered digital democracy and multi-actor multi-level local governance lost elections of 2019. Although a relatively large body of research investigated the feasibility of democratic innovations by contrasting their designs and implementation processes onto the matrix of their objectives and underlying ideological principles, the literature explaining their outcomes is scarce. Few studies focus on factors modeling the sustainability of participatory democracy as city regime, and the most common approach stresses out neoliberal inhibitors, as structural breaks which limit the depth and quality of participation. The present study aims to contribute to filling this gap by extending the analytical framework to encompass factors related to horizontalism, as enablers of democracy innovations. It is concluded that while horizontal governance works as a spillover of inclusive participation, it is highly vulnerable to attacks designed to vertically restructure its working processes.

El activismo mediático del 15M como herramienta para la producción de conocimiento: acción pedagógica, aprendizajes y ventanas de oportunidad

Este artículo aborda el activismo mediático del 15M como herramienta pedagógico-política para la producción de conocimiento. La metodología combina un análisis documental y 12 entrevistas en profundidad a activistas y a periodistas. En los hallazgos se muestra la acción pedagógica del 15M a través de la creación de medios y su influencia en los medios independientes. Se aportan evidencias empíricas sobre el legado de los indignados y se abren vías de investigación interdisciplinares para el estudio de las relaciones entre comunicación, movimientos sociales y procesos educativos.

The rise of a new media ecosystem: exploring 15M’s educommunicative legacy for radical democracy

ABSTRACT This article explores the influence that the educommunicative dimension of the 15M Movement has had on the creation and consolidation of a new ecosystem of independent media. To this end, we rely on a document analysis of the movement’s minutes and manifestos and on the review of the editorial principles and educational activities of a sample of independent media. We also draw on ten in-depth interviews with key journalists and activists who actively participated in the 15M. We argue that the movement’s media activism had a clear educommunicative orientation that strengthened pre-existing media activism, opening windows of opportunity for media innovation. This contributed to the rise of a new media ecosystem of independent media characterised by three key elements: (1) synergies and mutual support; (2) the key role of the community of subscribers and users; and (3) an educational agency with a public service orientation. Finally, we illustrate that this new media ecosystem displays a clear educommunicative orientation. This orientation is rooted in the imaginary and practices of the 15M and is based on the revitalised civic role of journalism and on the value of information for radical democracy. This article advances social movement studies by engaging a dialogue between an educommunicative perspective and a media ecology lens. It articulates the relevance of media as educational agents and explores the impact of a social movement in the creation and shaping of a new media ecosystem.

15-M Mobilizations and the penalization of counter-hegemonic protest in contemporary Spain

ABSTRACT This article discusses 15-M and anti-austerity mobilizations in Spain from the perspective of repression and penalization. The literature has paid a great deal of attention to the consequences of this cycle of protest in relation to the quality of democratic participation and governance; it could be argued that the 15-M movement has raised the standards for key aspects of Spanish democracy. In articulating new counter-hegemonic claims, however, 15-M mobilizations have created an opportunity for new forms of repression. Drawing on criminology, socio-legal studies, and mobilization literature, we argue that this cycle of protest has been penalized. This involves a combination of technologies of repression that include invasive policing, securitization, and criminalization. Penalization needs to be seen as a dissent-suppressing mechanism, a negative response by political authorities and private actors that thrives when societies suffer from widespread anxieties about insecurity and crime.

The mobilising memory of the 15-M movement: recollections and sediments in Spanish protest culture

ABSTRACT The 15-M movement, which emerged in 2011 amidst the Great Recession in Spain, has achieved the status of transformative protest event. Social movement research using this concept has mostly focused on meso-level legacies: event memories shape later organisational dynamics within social movements and among activists. Collective memories can, however, transcend the activists’ milieu, acting as a sediment in the political culture of broader social sectors. Along this line of inquiry, this article examines the memory of the 15-M movement among ordinary demonstrators in two recent mobilisations (International Women’s Day and the pensioners’ protests). Based on forty-four in-depth interviews, we show not only a widespread recollection of 15-M eight years later, but also that memories include mobilising components, influencing the perceptions of protest as an efficacious political tool, or extending protest repertoires that are now considered familiar and legitimate. Recollections of 15-M are also associated with changes in the critical understanding of the political system and the advancement of a new political subject, which envisages an active role in politics for ordinary citizens. Significantly, these mobilising memories are discernible even among those who did not participate at the time, showing that cultural legacies may have transcended the first-instance protagonists. In short, protest action, subjects, critical mentalities and repertoires gained an enduring legitimacy, which is consistent with the extension of alternative horizontal logics of politics and more active understandings of citizenship.

Politician, activist… or hero?

AbstractThis article explores how narratives and their discursive elements construct the idea of rebelliousness in subjects who followed different pathways through politics and activism after the Spanish 15-M movement. Methodologically, two representative examples of narratives have been selected on the basis of interviews with participants in the movement. To study these cases, the concept of rebel narratives is proposed from the perspective of narrative as social practice. The analysis applied here is based on a dialogue between the two cases studied, as discourses in which the activity of their tellers develops in certain contexts of discourse production. Based on this analysis, it is suggested that rebelliousness, in addition to manifesting subjective affiliations, fulfils a performative function with which the subjects legitimise their chosen path and constitute themselves, motivating, in the cases presented, revisions of the past or the rhetoric characteristic of a hero.

Methodological Experiences in Collaborative Ethnography. Communication and Participation as Frameworks for Constructing in Common

In this article, we will analyze how we built the research process of a collaborative ethnography with the Stop Evictions Granada 15M Movement (SEG15M). We will begin with a brief contextualization of the housing issues in Spain and the SEG15M movement to explain why we started the co-research experience with the movement. Next, we will clarify the composition, function, and main purposes of the ‘debate groups’ in our research, as well as their particular differences and dynamics concerning other qualitative techniques. Finally, we will focus on two main aspects, participation and communication, which emerged within the debates and later materialized into a transmedia project and the development of a radio soap opera. The latter is a product, and a process, of collaborative work that bridges communication and participation at the intra- and inter-group levels. It is a fictional story that emerges from the common lived experiences of the groups.

Zasada kontestacji? Przekształcenie hiszpańskiego porządku politycznego w perspektywie neoinstytucjonalnej

The main objective of this article is to analyse the transformation of the Spanish political order from a neo-institutional perspective, taking into account the particular impact of the contestation element created during 15M Movement on the functioning and the relationships between formal and informal institutions after 2011. The transformation of the rules that form a certain order is considered to be binding for the direction of reshaping of the subsystem covering relations both between citizens and political parties and between the groups themselves. The principle of contestation proposed within the framework of the text allows us to grasp the changes taking place in society and their consequences for the political order that is currently being formed.

The antimonies of the PAH (Platform of Mortgage Victims) in Spain

Abstract In the Platform of Mortgage Victims (PAH) the common view exists that all activists are equal, that there are no leaders, and that there is no division of labor between grassroots activists and activist-politicians. We show that the trope of horizontalism (the nonexistence of hierarchy within the platform) in effect hides the existence of an unacknowledged leadership structure and of electoral aspirations. We argue that the tensions between grassroots activists and emerging activist-politicians stand for a fundamental divide that renders possible a true change in the state of the situation. This article draws on the work of Alain Badiou and Jodi Dean to argue that the PAH contributed to the 15M movement as a truth event by staging performances of egalitarianism and cultivating solidarity in a disciplined way.

From social mobilisation to institutional politics: Reflecting on the impact of municipalism in Madrid and Barcelona

ABSTRACT In the 2015 local elections, political formations with their roots in social movements took control of several Spanish city councils, including Madrid and Barcelona. The wave of protests that began with the 15-M movement in 2011 gave way to an electoral model that aspired to promote transformative politics and new ways of ‘doing politics’. The aim of the present study is to examine the scope and the limits of this move into the institutions in Madrid and Barcelona (2015–2019). The case studies involved in-depth interviews and a documentary review. Results reveal significant differences between the two cities.

“Pedir un café puede costarte la vida”: phobias of democracy in Álex de la Iglesia’s El bar

ABSTRACT The so-called Spanish transition to democracy has largely been a process of collective forgetting undertaken for the sake of progress and measured by the country’s perceived success at democratization, for example, by adopting a new constitution and joining the European Union after forty years of a repressive fascist dictatorship. As the 15-M movement took off in 2011, the effectiveness of the Transition started to be openly questioned. In the 2017 film El bar, directed and co-written by Álex de la Iglesia, the characters find themselves in a situation that appears to be a random terrorist killing as one of the characters walks out of a bar in Madrid. Implying that we live in a society where “pedir un café puede costarte la vida”, the film employs a rather predictable narrative trope of trapping a handful of characters from different walks of life in an enclosed space and shows the audience how they organize themselves into a community whose goal is to leave the trap as a community, thus questioning its functionality. This article examines the plethora of fears that circulate in democratic Spain including terrorism, disease and Balkanization through a cinematic lens that seeks to reevaluate the Transition process and the very notion of crisis that shapes the public sphere and is, in turn, shaped by it.

A People’s Masquerade: The 15-M’s Cinematic Negotiations Around the Place and Time of ‘Real’ Democracy

The 15-M movement was inextricably linked to the iconic occupation of the Puerta del Sol, where a ‘real’ democracy was demanded. Yet the demand was not so much in response to years of democratic pretence as it was a negotiation around how a new democratic identity would be performed. It was the performance of a demos that negotiated its popular substance (the ‘we’ in ‘we the people’) in situ and, more critically, through filmic representation. Thus, films on the movement provide an opportunity to examine how popular authenticity was negotiated between the movement’s claims to realness and its ersatz other.

What has become of the Indignados? The biographical consequences of participation in the 15M movement in Madrid (2011–19)

ABSTRACT This article examines the biographical consequences of participation in 15 M by following the trajectories, from May 2011 to November 2019, of individuals who took part in the movement in Madrid. Based on a field study combining observations and repeat interviews, this follow-up of the trajectories of forty Indignados (22 in the period 2013–15 and 18 to 2019) reveals considerable biographical impacts on both representations and individual practices in the political, personal and professional spheres. These impacts were particularly salient among those who had experienced biographical disruptions, whether in relation to political socialization or a drop in social status, and those who had mobilized in an intense and lasting way. However, 15 M had also had a profound influence on the biographies of those with an activist background and those who had been less involved in the movement. This microsociological approach gives us a better understanding of the biographical trajectories of the Indignados and provides an account of the transformations in collective action in Madrid over the past ten years. The main legacy of 15 M is therefore that it created a new generation of activists who are now involved in a multitude of activist microspheres and institutional settings.