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Social Movement Studies: Journal of

Social, Cultural and Political Protest
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Young People Took to the Streets

and all of a Sudden all of the Political
Parties Got Old: The 15M Movement in
Spain
Neil Hughes

School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University ,

Nottingham, UK
Published online: 22 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Neil Hughes (2011) Young People Took to the Streets and all of a Sudden all
of the Political Parties Got Old: The 15M Movement in Spain, Social Movement Studies: Journal of
Social, Cultural and Political Protest, 10:4, 407-413, DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2011.614109
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2011.614109

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Social Movement Studies,

Vol. 10, No. 4, 407413, November 2011

PROFILE

Young People Took to the Streets and all of

a Sudden all of the Political Parties Got Old:
The 15M Movement in Spain
NEIL HUGHES
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School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

ABSTRACT This profile looks at the emergence of the 15M Movement in Spain. It analyses the role
played by social networks in the movements formation and identifies the grievances that mobilised a
broad coalition of groups and individuals including dissatisfaction with the two-party political
system, the venality of political and economic elites, widespread corruption, the economic crisis and
the politics of austerity. The profile also looks at the action repertoire employed by the movement and
its organisational structure. In terms of the former, it focuses attention on the role played by protest
camps and assemblies in giving a voice to the excluded and building the bonds of solidarity
necessary to sustain activists through protest. In terms of organisation, it describes a structure that is
highly decentralised, has been influenced by protest movements in other parts of the world such as
Latin America and has marked regional differences. It concludes with observations about what the
15M means for Spanish politics and the direction it might take in its struggle against the political and
economic elites that have dominated Spain since the transition to democracy in the 1970s.
KEY WORDS : Indignados, social networks, protest camps, horizontalidad, assemblies

Since the transition to democracy in the 1970s, Spain has witnessed numerous periods of
intense social movement activism and engagement. Peace activists, feminists, ecologists,
trades unions, international solidarity advocates, the neighbourhood movement, societal
groups opposing regional nationalist violence in the Basque Country, the pro-life
movement, immigrant rights and gay rights groups, squatters and anti-globalisation
activists have all demonstrated their ability to mobilise mass support in favour of their
demands. These movements have achieved significant gains since Francos death in 1975.
Arguably, the most successful has been the feminist movement, which has achieved many
of its principal demands ranging from the right to divorce (1981), legislation guaranteeing
equal opportunities in all areas of social, political, economic and cultural life (2007) and,
most recently, the full legalisation of abortion (2010).
One of the most important mobilisations Spain has seen in recent years began on 15
May 2011. As the country approached regional and municipal elections, tens of thousands
of young people, students, the unemployed and workers came out onto the streets in over
50 cities to protest against a lack of real democracy and endemic corruption stemming
Correspondence Address: Neil Hughes, School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton
Lane, Nottingham NG11 3NS, UK. Email: neil.hughes@ntu.ac.uk
1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/11/040407-7 q 2011 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2011.614109

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N. Hughes

from the interpenetration of economic and political power in Spain. This is the second time
in recent Spanish history that protests have coincided with elections. The first occasion
was on 11 March 2004, just three days before national elections, when over 11 million
people participated in mass demonstrations following the Madrid train bombings in which
191 people lost their lives. The protests were organised to express both outrage at the
atrocities and anger at government attempts to blame Basque nationalists for the bombing
rather than the real perpetrators, Islamist terrorists opposed to Spanish involvement in the
Iraq war. According to many observers, the demonstrations changed the outcome of the
national elections, which instead of resulting in the widely predicted re-election of the
Popular Party (PP), were won by the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE).
The biggest protest on 15 May took place in Madrid, where the self-styled indignados
marched behind the banner of the organisation at the heart of the mobilisation, Democracia
Real Ya, chanting slogans such as were not merchandise in the hands of politicians and
bankers, and the guilty ones should pay for the crisis. What started out in the capital as a
march quickly morphed into an occupation when around 250 protestors decided to remain
in the central square, the Puerta del Sol, until after the elections had taken place on 22 May.
Attempts by the police to forcefully remove the protestors on 17 May backfired when
thousands of supporters descended on the square after messages describing the police
action were posted on social networking sites such as Twitter and eyewitness videos were
uploaded to YouTube or shown in the mainstream media. This spontaneous act of solidarity
was repeated elsewhere as people, young and old, flocked to city centres across Spain to
show their support for the activists in Madrid and in defiance of a decision by the Spanish
Electoral Board to ban the demonstrations. Support was not simply confined to Spain.
Across the world, similar protests were organised by Spaniards living abroad and local
sympathisers in cities as diverse as London, Amsterdam, Istanbul, New York, Paris,
Brussels, Bogota and Bologna. As the week progressed, what had begun as a one-off protest
rapidly turned into another in the long line of protracted mobilisations that have dominated
world events since the financial crisis rocked the global economy in 2008 and gave birth to a
new social movement in Spain, the 15M Movement, the main contours of which will be set
out in this paper. The features discussed include its online origins, main causes of
contention, organisational structure and protest repertoire. It concludes with observations
about what the 15M means for Spanish politics and the direction it might take in its struggle
against the political and economic elites that have dominated Spain since the transition.
Social Networks
The events that took place on 15 May were conceived and organised online. Spain has a
dense network of alternative and radical groups, bloggers and left-wing activists who
communicate and interact frequently with each other via Facebook and Twitter and the
Spanish social networking site, Tuenti. It was in this environment that the protest platform
at the centre of the mobilisation, Democracia Real Ya, first appeared. Although initially
little more than a website born of an online conversation amongst activists from groups
such as Juventud en Accion and No les votes, within three months of its appearance more
than 200 organisations including humanists, NGOs (Intermon), ecologists, neighbour
associations, youth groups, students and teachers organisations, Facebook groups,
bloggers, mortgage defaulters, the unemployed, and solidarity groups had pledged their
support to the platform.

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The website itself played a key role in framing the 15 May action and developing a
sense of common identity, solidarity and purpose amongst the participating groups. Each
page contained a prominent advert imploring supporters (using, incidentally, the same
lettering design that was employed on banners in the student protests against fee increases
in the UK) to Take the Streets on 15/07/2011. The websites manifesto section
identified the values and principles the movement stands for (equality, progress, solidarity,
respect for cultural, economic, social and political rights, environmental sustainability,
human well-being and happiness), the political and economic threats to these and the need
for an ethical revolution. Its who are we? section also helped frame the action by
identifying broad constituencies of support (the unemployed, low-waged, sub-contracted,
precarious and young people), the objects of discontent, a common agenda and conditions
of participation such as the platforms commitment to non-violence and opposition to
racism, homophobia and xenophobia.

Causes of Contention
The framing of the protests as a peaceful demonstration against the two-party political
system, the venality of political and economic elites, widespread corruption and the
politics of austerity had a powerful echo amongst a broad swathe of Spanish society. There
is a widely held belief in Spain that the institutional arrangements and electoral law drawn
up during the transition to democracy favour the two main national political parties in
general elections, and moderate regional-nationalist parties such as the Basque Nationalist
Party (PNV) and the Catalan, Convergence and Union (CiU) in regional elections. This
has had the effect of marginalising smaller parties and depriving their supporters of a
voice. In addition to institutional disaffection, distrust of politicians is also on the rise. This
is reflected in the results of national and Europe-wide public-opinion surveys conducted by
the Eurobarometer and the Madrid-based Centre for Sociological Research (CIS). Not
since 1995 has the political class been held in such low regard in Spain. At that time the
issues conspiring to undermine public confidence in politicians were the extra-judicial
killings of suspected ETA (which stands for Euskadi ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland
and Freedom) terrorists by the state-funded Antiterrorist Liberation Group (GAL) and a
series of scandals involving bankers such as Mario Conde and public officials with close
ties to political parties, for instance, the former Director of the Civil Guard, Luis Roldan.
This time around, the main reasons for the lack of confidence in the political class include
political corruption and politicians poor handling of the economic crisis. According to the
CIS, 85.6% of the population believe that corruption is widespread, affecting all levels of
governmentlocal, regional, national and European (see Barometro de junio, Avance de
Resultados, Estudio No 2.905, http://datos.cis.es/pdf/Es2905mar_A.pdf). The practice is
considered to be at its most rife at the regional and local levels, where jobs, contracts,
subsidies and other payments are all considered to be subject to fraud. At the municipal
level, many of the recent corruption and bribery scandals have been linked to the
construction boom that fuelled economic growth in Spain between 1994 and 2009. A
number of public officials have, for example, been charged with accepting illegal
payments from property developers in exchange for decisions favourable to their interests.
Much of the anger is directed towards the current PSOE government, which is blamed for
having done little to tackle corruption in Spain.

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Public rejection of the government is also being fuelled by the economic crisis. Spains
first recession in 15 years, soaring unemployment (reaching four million for the first time
in Spanish history in March 2009) and mounting fears about the unsustainable debt levels
are all taking their toll on a government approaching the end of its second term. Popular
displeasure at the Spanish government is reflected in a recent Eurobarometer survey in
which 86% of respondents stated that its handling of the economic crisis has been
ineffective (see Opinion Publica en la Union Europea, Informe Nacional: Espana,
Autumn 2010: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb74/eb74_es_es_nat.pdf).
It also translated into the PSOEs worst ever election results in the regional and municipal
elections that provided the backdrop to the 15 May protests. It is widely expected that the
PSOEs poor showing (it lost 1.5 million votes) will be repeated in the forthcoming
general election, which must take place before the end of March 2012. Government
attempts to address the debt issue through austerity measures have been questioned on
economic and moral grounds. There is considerable disgruntlement, for example, that the
impact of spending cuts introduced in 2010 (to reduce the deficit from 11.1% to 4.4% by
2012) is falling exclusively on Spanish taxpayers whilst lenders are getting off largely scot
free. With youth unemployment having climbed to over 40%, the crisis measures are
having an especially severe impact on young people in Spain. Due to the absence of
effective job creation initiatives and sluggish economic growth, many of those affected
will be left with a stark choice; either leave Spain to find work elsewhere or join the ranks
of the long-term unemployed. The lack of any prospects for young people is fuelling an
existential crisis about their role in Spanish political, economic and social life. The deep
sense of malaise is reflected both in the angry speeches and tales of hardship and despair
recounted by many of the young people during the protests and the emotionally charged
name used by the protestors to describe themselves: los indignados, taken from Stephane
Hessels, Indignaos! (Indignez-vous in French, translated into English as A Time for
Outrage), which has been at the top of the non-fiction bestsellers list in Spain for most of
2011. In his book, Hessel calls on young people, originally in his native France, to eschew
apathy and to find cause for indignation in human rights abuses taking place around the
world and to reject a global economic system that he considers the cause of the ever
increasing gap between rich and poor.
The criticism of global capitalism articulated by Hessel is also found in the work of
another influential 15M ideologue, Jose Lus Sampedro, whose YouTube video, The
Spanish Revolution, has been viewed by more than 600,000 people. In the video, the
socialist government is criticised for its inability to offer an alternative to the pro-business,
neoliberal policies considered by Sampedro to be the cause of the economic and social
problems facing Spain. Two protestors I talked to in Valencia on 31 May, Juan Pons and
Luis Antoni Ferrer, cited recent government decisions in relation to illegal file-sharing and
mortgages as examples of the excessive influence business interests are able to exert on
government decisions. The Sinde Law, introduced in 2009 to try and address illegal filesharing, was singled out by the protestors for particular opprobrium. The hostile response
to this law was fuelled by front page revelations in national newspapers such as El Pas,
stating that the legislation had been included at the behest of the US government following
lobbying by its domestic film and music industries. The evidence supporting the
newspapers claims came from a series of emails released by Wikileaks, emanating from
the US embassy in Madrid. After a long and tortuous journey through the Spanish
parliamentary process, the Sinde Law was finally passed just three months before the May

Profile: Los Indignados

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demonstrations, on 15 February 2011. The two protestors were also critical of the
governments refusal to consider proposals to allow mortgage holders, at risk of default, to
hand over the keys of their property to their lenders as a means of settling their debts. At
present, if the sale of a repossessed property sells for less than the mortgage is worth, the
mortgage holder remains liable for the difference. The reason given by the Prime Minister,
Jose Luis Zapatero, and the Economic Development Minister, Jose Blanco, was that the
proposed measures would constitute a further blow to Spanish banks at a time when they
were already under pressure in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

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Movement Structure and Protest Repertoire

Despite its modest beginnings as a website, Democracia Real Ya has spawned a broadbased movement with considerable powers of mobilisation. Since 15 May, it has organised
another major action, the 250,000 strong protest on June 2011 against the austerity
measures contained in the Euro Pact, and is planning another demonstration for 15
October. Although early in its evolution, it is possible to discern the main contours of the
movements organisational structure and protest repertoire. The 15M defines itself as a
grassroots, non-party, non-violent citizens movement. It eschews the organisational
characteristics of the social movements that emerged during the transition such as
hierarchy, bureaucracy and double militancy, whereby activists combine social movement
participation with party membership. As in the case of the World Social Forum (WSF), the
movement excludes the direct participation of political parties. When asked, its activists
are at pains to emphasise that they have no political party or trade union affiliations and are
deeply sceptical of the extent to which they can achieve their goals through
institutionalised action. This principle is articulated online, features prominently in
literature distributed during the demonstrations and is reflected in the movements attitude
to the outcome of elections, which is best described as indifferent. One of the leaflets
distributed at the Valencia camp states, for example, that the 15M Movement couldnt
care less who wins the elections.
The 15M has adopted a decentralised structure that is more redolent of anarchism, the
global justice movement, environmental activists, squatters rights and the peace
movement than the more hierarchically organised feminists, trade unions or international
solidarity movement in Spain. Lessons have also been drawn from the Arab uprising and
protest movements in Iceland, Greece and Latin America. For example, the movement has
adopted the horizontalidad principle that figured prominently in the 2002 2004 Argentine
protests against government-imposed austerity, whereby decisions are reached
collectively through participation and the free exchange of information in an atmosphere
of respect for diversity and inclusivity.
The movement has a significant regional dimension with groups mobilising in all of
Spains major towns and cities. Barcelona, for example, has been one of the most active
regional protest centres. The movements approach has been more confrontational in the
Catalan capital than in other parts of Spain. For example, a mass encirclement of the
regional parliament was organised on 15 June to coincide with the passing of austerity
measures. Consequently, a number of deputies, including the Catalan President, Artur
Mas, were forced to enter the parliament building by helicopter. During the action, several
deputies were sprayed with paint and there violent confrontations between demonstrators
and the Mossos, the Catalan police force. The Mossos have been widely criticised for their

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heavy-handed tactics, especially during an attempt to clear the protest camp from the main
square, the Placa de Catalunya, on 27 May.
The protestors have privileged marches, prolonged occupations, non-violent direct
action, public deliberation in commissions and assemblies, and an internet-based media
campaign as the main forms of action. Of these, the most important protest forms
employed by the 15M are protest camps and deliberative assemblies. Protest camps have a
long tradition in contentious politics in Spain. They were used to the greatest effect in 1994
by the 0.7 Movement, when it organised camps in cities throughout Spain to pressurise the
then PSOE government to honour its pledge to allocate 0.7% of GDP to foreign aid. In the
case of the 15M, the camps provided the excluded with an opportunity to gain a voice in
debates on a series of local, national and global issues. Through participation in
thematically organised commissions with titles such as power, action, co-ordination,
communications, international and logistics, protestors formulated proposals to be
voted on in daily assemblies. Decisions made in regional assemblies were emailed to the
main camp in Madrid, where they shaped the formulation of shared national goals. This
structure produced a set of movement proposals that include elimination of the privileges
enjoyed by the Spanish political class; a series of labour market reforms including cuts to
the working week; the right to housing; high-quality public services; banking regulation;
reform of the tax system, participatory democracy and cuts in military spending. By
working together to provide services such as food and shelter, access to medical
assistance, legal advice and even relationship counselling, camp members developed the
bonds of solidarity necessary to sustain them through the action. The role the protests
played in giving a voice and building solidarity is clearly articulated by a Spanish
contributor, Selvi, to an online discussion on a website created by supporters of the 15M in
London:
I think its very important to take part in dialogue, in small groups to be able to work
better together, exchange ideas and, above all, get to know each other. We must
remind people that we care about them and that we want to know their problems and
help them wherever possible. We saw this yesterday in the square when we were
visited by our Greek brothers. It was very emotional. And that message must be
transmitted to the rest of society. (http://hispanosenlondres.com/discussion/co
mment/749#Comment_749, accessed 30 May 2011)
The camps also served as a working model of an alternative society in which authority is
decentralised and services are distributed on the basis of need. The exemplary nature of the
camp explains why alcohol and drugs were banned and activists were careful not to
antagonise the rest of the community by making a mess or playing loud music. The
generally positive message the protesters sought to convey was summed up in the slogan si
acampamos (in English, yes we camp).
Conclusions
On 15 May, Spain witnessed the emergence of a new social movement capable of
confronting the elites that have dominated the countrys economy and polity since the
transition to democracy in the 1970s. The new movement is another example of a cycle of
contention, first seen in Latin America in the 1990s, and which has now spread to the

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Middle East and Europe where engagement and conflict are directed towards the twin
pillars of globalisation: neoliberal economics and liberal democracy and the institutions
that promote it. The new movement constitutes a marked shift in the power of mobilisation
in Spain away from parties of the left and traditional movements such as the workers
movement, towards a new coalition of grass roots actors and groups that are using online
social networks to organise action and innovative protest forms to give a voice to the
excluded. In addition to its impact on domestic politics, the 15M Movement has had
international resonance with solidarity protests breaking out around the world with some,
such as in Greece, even self-styling themselves as indignados and chanting slogans in
Spanish in their own protests.
Where the movement will go from here and what lasting impact it will have is difficult
to say. At the time of writing, the indignados were closing the protest camps and shifting
attention to the formation of commissions and assemblies in the working class barrios of
Spains towns and cities. One of the most important factors shaping the future direction of
the movement is an ideological clash taking place between reformists, who limit their
demands to changes to the electoral law and greater transparency in politics, and groups
advocating a radical, anti-system direction and more confrontational forms of protest. As
Bari Daz asks in a discussion forum on the 15M London website, are we simply
reformists that want patches in our country to cover a system that is full of holes or do we
really want a revolution, a real change to the system? (http://hispanosenlondres.com/
discussion/525).
The outcome of this debate will, to a large extent, be determined by the continuing
economic crisis and the measures adopted to address it. If, as seems likely, these continue
to emphasise austerity and fail to address the chronic levels of unemployment that threaten
the future of young people in Spain, then it is likely that the movement will become
increasingly radical and its protest repertoire more combative in the months and years
ahead.
Neil Hughes is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Languages and International
Studies at Nottingham Trent University. He teaches modules in Latin American studies
and the Spanish language on the Modern Languages degree programme and about
indigenous protest on the MA in Human Security and Environmental Change. His research
interests are in Spanish and Latin American area studies and the uses of technology in
language and area studies teaching.