palvarez's blog

In the second part of this post I’ve explained the recent history and evolution of the social movements in Spain. In this post I’m going to focus in #15m (or Indignados) movement, how they’ve started, their proposals, things that, IMHO, they’ve done well, things to improve and where they should go.

As I said in my previous post, Indignados movement has been influenced by the #nolesvotes movement, which shows both how to self-organize in a global way (the opposite of the traditional social movements has done historically, working at a neighborhood level or, at best, at a city level) and how the new technologies can help in this self-organization, but, obviously, it’s not the only movement that has influenced to #15M.

In recent years the social movements in Spain have seen a revival in grassroots organization, whose work in the neighborhoods has been an essential breeding ground for movement #15M. These grassroots organizations have a participatory democracy based on people’s assemblies and consensus decision making. These horizontally structured assemblies are completely transparent and open to anyone who wants to participate. The groundwork has served not only to learn work techniques and methodologies assemblies, but also enabled them to know the people, know their concerns and problems and know how to work with them.

Therefore, having these two movements as parents it’s not strange how quickly this movement has emerged and spread throughout all the country, in a way that only a few people could imagine.

On January 2011, the digital platform Democracia real YA (one of the main actors in #15M movement) was created on Spanish social networks and forums. Having the support of organisations such as ATTAC, Intermon Oxfam, Ecologists in Action or Youth without Future, and using Twitter and Facebook it called “the unemployed, poorly paid, the subcontractors, the precarious, young people…” to take the streets on 15 May in almost every city in Spain (you have at Wikipedia a comprehensive list of all the places that were called to take the streets on that day). That same day, small demonstrations in support of the Spanish ones were organised in Dublin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Bologna, London and Paris.

The first protest was called under the motto “we are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers” and was focused on opposition to what the protesters called “antisocial means in the hands of bankers”, partly referring to the changes made in 2010 to contain the ongoing European sovereign debt crisis through bailout of the banks, which the Spanish society saw as responsible for the crisis, while at the same time the government kept announcing social program cutbacks. Protesters also demanded more democracy, a new electoral law and end to political corruption as well as other claims, such as banks nationalisation.

The main demand of #15M is a radical change in Spanish politics, and, although #15M is a heterogeneous and ambiguous group, they share a strong rejection of unemployment, welfare cuts, Spanish politicians, the current two-party system in Spain between the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and the People’s Party, as well as the current political system, capitalism, banks and bankers, political corruption and firmly support what they call basic rights: home, work, culture, health and education.

As #nolesvotes, they don’t consider themselves to be represented by any traditional party nor favoured by the measures approved by politicians. If you want to know more about the #15M proposals and actions you can visit their official page and read their manifesto.

The impact of #15M has been bigger than anyone thought, because according to statistics published by RTVE (the Spanish public broadcasting company) between 6.5 and 8 million Spaniards have participated in these protests, an unthinkable thing at the beginning of the year, and in this kind of things you can’t trust the official information, so probably the participation has been even more.

I think the most important thing that this movement has made is to make the spanish population aware that we can change the actual situation of our country, because a lot of people didn’t think they can do something to make a change.

Also, I think that #15M can have a life much longer than much people can imagine, from one side because the changes they are proposing are big ones, and they need time to define both the changes we have to make to have a fairly society and the strategy to make this changes possible, and from the other side because they have reach a big impact in the population, a lot of people has been a part of #15M, and being part of a movement like this makes you feel that your contribution is important, and, although sometimes you can desperate, this is a feeling that once you have it you want to keep it.

Seeing the movement from the outside (although I wanted to involve myself in the movement I couldn’t find the time until now) I think that sometimes they’ve enter in the politician’s game more than they needs, but, obviously, it’s a new and complex situation to handle and it can’t be perfect.

The movement has passed some critical times and situations (like the time after the local elections or the Pope visit), and they’ll going to pass some more critical situations, but I think that the most important one is to handle the people’s mood (it’s a long path and a lot of people can desperate).

Finally, although the movement can end in nothing, I think that the process is very important, not only because we’re trying to change important thinks, but also because we are changing the point of view of a lot of people that, until now, they didn’t realize they can make a change, and this is the seed of future revolutions.

Happy Hacking!

P.D.: You can access to information about the 15-M movement at the wikipedia here, here (in spanish) and here (in english).

P.P.D.: All the ideas I expose here are personal opinions, comming only from myself, and here I don’t represent any of the organizations I belong to.

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…