In the first part of this post I’ve explained the economical situation of Spain and how we’ve reached this situation. Now it’s the turn to explain a little bit the origins of the Indignados movement ant the recent history of the social movements in Spain.
The Indignados movement (or #15M) born officially the 15 of May of 2011, although I think the real begining started before. In order to understand better the origins of the #15M it’s better to explain a little bit the recent phistory of the social movements in Spain.
As you might know, before the actual democracy Spain was headed by Francisco Franco, a dictator aligned ideologically with Hitler. Some years before his dead (1975) the social movements in Spain begans to be very strong, and, although they had to be subversive (the government was very represive even after the dead of Franco), they gain a lot of popularity, specially in the young people.
After 1975 and during the 80’s Spain became into a cultural and political revolution, and a lot of political parties (included PSOE and the Comunist Party) and labor unions (CCOO, UGT, CNT, …) were legalized. This was the golden epoch of the social movements in Spain, because a lot of people were conscious that it was important to be part of the (not only) political change that was happening in Spain and, a very important thing, they were a part of this changes, in part because the government were taking them into consideration and making changes in the way the social movements were saying.
After that, during the final 80s and the 90s the political parties forgot about the people and began to govern for themselves and for the “markets” (a.k.a the rich people) and the social movements began to accommodate, partially because the social situation were much better than during the dictatorial period and partially because some state mechanisms made the social movements too dependents from the government charity, and in the moment that any organization depends on the government it has to do some things and leave to do other things to please them and survive.
I think that the reaction to this circumstances come both from a new social movement surged in Spain (and in the world :)), the Free Software movement, that has become very strong sice the final 90s, and from the deterioration of the spanish life style, specially with the actual crisis environment.
In the last years we’ve seen here in Spain a lot of movement against the software patents in Europe and agains some copyright laws that have emerged in the last years in Spain, and a big part of this movement has been lead by hacktivist that have been participated in the Free Software movement during several years.
This movements have been organized dinamically, without a need of a phisical organization, and in several times during a specific period of time. This has made that the state, with his old mechanisms of working, couldn’t stop this kind of organization, that have made the enough noise to influence again in the political life of the country and in the spanish people.
This was the kind of organization of #nolesvotes, the father of the #15m (or indignados) movement, who asks to vote in the municipal elections to any party but PSOE or PP, rised after the approval of an unfair copyright law by the two main political parties of Spain. Because of that #nolesvotes gained the support and/or comprehension of the population, being, in my point of view, a big success.
To be continued…