The Spaniards who launched ‘occupy’ protests
It has been 10 years since a group of Spaniards angered by the economic crisis took their fury onto the streets, occupying public squares in a new form of protest that caught on worldwide.
Under a clear blue sky on May 15, 2011, thousands gathered in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square and set up camp, refusing to budge for weeks in a mass protest over unemployment, corruption and homelessness.
Calling themselves “los Indignados” — or “the indignant ones” — their protest hit the headlines around the world.
And a decade on, images of these tens of thousands of demonstrators camping out in favour of a better world still capture the imagination.
Among them were young people, pensioners, the unemployed but also those with jobs — all gathered in makeshift tents, sleeping on cardboard boxes in a sort of improvised alternative village.
“Without the crisis of 2008, the movement wouldn’t have existed’’, says Pablo Gallego, founder of Real Democracy Now!, a collective involved in organising the 15M (May 15) protests.
On that day, with unemployment topping 20 per cent, thousands hit the streets around the country following a wave of outrage on social media, explains Klaudia Alvarez, who co-wrote a book on the movement with Gallego, called: “We, the indignant ones”.
“The explosion of individual complaints on social media showed that what was happening to you was happening to others as well’’, she said.
Fuelled by social media, the protests were horizonal in structure, decentralised with no identifiable leader, and took shape without the involvement of unions or political parties.
“The movement had no label... but was very political’’, emphasised Pablo Gallego, remembering “with a lot of tenderness” this “romantic” moment for which “these people who had never been militants and were demonstrating”. Its demands were idealistic in nature, denouncing the excesses of capitalism, the instability of jobs and an electoral system that favoured the big parties.
“The movement was non-partisan and not linked to the unions, but it was very political’’, said Gallego, who remembers the early days of the movement “with great fondness”.
“It was very emotional... people were demonstrating who weren’t activists.”
The movement was non-partisan and not linked to the unions, but it was very political
PABLO GALLEGO Founder of Real Democracy Now!
A SEA OF PROTESTS
“We are the people’’, they would chant while blocking the eviction of indebted families, denouncing the austerity imposed by the European Union, the IMF and the European Central Bank as Spain was gripped by record unemployment affecting half of the under-25s.
And they organised on social media via a campaign launched simultaneously by 80 people on Twitter, “creating a trending topic” which caught the media’s attention, recalls Francisco Jurado, a 38-year-old lawyer and former Indignado activist. Oscar Rivas, 48, remembers Madrid’s Puerta del Sol being covered by a sea of people who adopted a new way of communicating: hands in the air to symbolise applause, windmilling arms for going in a circle, and arms crossed to express dissent.