SPAIN’S MAY 15 PROTEST MOVEMENT CELEBRATES ITS FIRST ANNIVERSARY

May 15 sees the first anniversary of the 15-M protest movement. It was a public protest movement that was angry and fed up with the inaction and corruption of politicians, the bailing out of banks that caused the financial crisis in the first place and those made homeless as mortgage companies had reposed their homes. The latter had lost the roofs over their heads yet still owed the banks huge amounts of money.

The movement started with huge street protests and encampments in Spain’s major cities and town but smaller groups were also to be found in every community. Indeed it was a community movement that coincided with the municipal and regional elections held in May 2011.

The manifesto message of last May was “not a euro more to rescue the banks, education and public health of quality, withdrawal of labour reform, guaranteed access to dignified housing and a universal basic income.”

As the 15-M movement started when socialist PSOE was in government in Spain the opposition centre right Partido Popular tried to jump on the protest bandwagon. However it soon became clear that the PP wanted the camp in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol removed and there were scenes of violence as police removed the encampment in Barcelona’s Plaza Cataluña. In the latter case there is convincing evidence the police acted as agent provocateurs.

Hence it comes as no surprise that now the PP is in government the minister of the interior, Jorge Fernández Diáz, has declared: “in no circumstances will we permit these camps.” It was a clear warning to the 15-M movement that their intention to retake the Puerta del Sol in Madrid and set up other camps in various cities and towns would not be tolerated. “The cities are not campsites,” warned Fernández Diáz.

The world has moved on but the plight of those represented by the 15-M movement has got worse; the banks have received further bailouts; political corruption remains rife, the king’s son-in-law is on trial for misappropriating funds and money laundering with the protests moving from main street to main stream.

15-M has now been joined by other groups such as Democracia Real Ya and all can be expected to stage demonstrations over this period. Their protests are being coordinated online at tomalaplaza.net and via Twitter using #15M and #SpanishRevolution.

It was the foreign media correspondents in Madrid and elsewhere in Spain that brought the news of the 15-M movement to the wider world and have kept them updated on its progress. This led to Spanish residents overseas holding protests outside their country’s embassies and the movement soon spread. The French, Greeks, Portuguese, Italians and indeed Britons, amongst others, would establish their own movements. There are also links to the Arab Spring protests in North Africa.

Since the 15-M movement was born Spain has now had a new centre-right government for six months. Yet what started out as the protests of Los Indignados – The Indignant in town squares has spread to various national protests and a General Strike. The nation is angry and will not be silenced by the threats of a centre right government in Madrid.

(Versions of the above article appeared in The Morning Star, London Progressive Journal, Panorama and other online publications on May 15 2012.)

PROTEST MOVEMENT OR TOURIST ATTRACTION?

 

We are told the Occupy movement started last summer in the USA on Wall Street. Whilst that is probably true the fact is the mass protest movement started in Spain under the 15-M banner.
 
Pictures were flashed around the world as there were mass occupations of plazas in Madrid and Barcelona. Whilst the former was largely peaceful there were accusations and indeed evidence of secret police infiltrating the crowds in Barcelona and fermenting violent confrontations.
 
The 15-M movement, which took its initials from the date of the municipal and some regional government elections in Spain (May 15), was protesting over the financial crisis and unemployment but also about the all pervasive political corruption in Spain.
 
Whilst 15-M still exists it has been joined by other mass movements one of which deals with the plight of those who have lost their homes through repossessions. The story invariably starts with the victims losing their jobs so they cannot keep up the mortgage payments, and then the bank or mortgage lender has them evicted so now they have no salary or home. The property is sold off cheap and the former householders finds they are responsible for the difference between their mortgage and the forced sale price. Hence not only have they no job, no home but now they owe over 100,000 euros to the bank.
 
What both the 15-M and other action groups have in common is they are an integral part of the local community. So whilst the world watched Madrid and Barcelona I signed the 15-M petition in Ronda, which has around 35,000 residents then marched in Jerez, the bankrupt Sherry city, with the unions and local protestors. It was the people who were on the streets, young, middle-aged and old, the unemployed, those in work and on pensions, children in arms and in prams, all classes, marching against the injustice that surrounds us.
 
Which brings me to my native London. At the end of November I was back in town and it was suggested I went to take a look at the Occupy movement outside St Pauls. Given my experiences with the 15-M in Spain I needed little persuading.
 
In the ‘Fabian Review’ Tom Hampson reveals a new poll carried out by the society and the TUC. In his opening paragraph he writes: “Quietly and without much fuss the British mainstream has shifted. Across the nation, worn out political territory has been vacated and tents have been pitched on the new centre-ground, and middle England has unfurled polite and new placards and banners that read ‘people before profit’, ‘narrow the gap between rich and poor’ and ‘protect the workers’. Tea has been brewed and hardier souls are even sleeping out overnight. Only the new radical fringe – mostly Tory voters – have stayed away from the party.”
 
Well the 15-M and other Spanish movements would certainly endorse those sentiments but what I found outside St Paul’s was sterile in the extreme. In Spain we marched and the mainstream political parties took note largely because elections were in the offing and they tried the clothes of the protestors on for size. The far left Izquierda Unida found they fitted best but socialist PSOE and the centre-right Partido Popular looked like scarecrows as both parties are the problem not the solution.
 
I sat on the steps of St Paul’s and listened to one of the speeches and was immediately aware that the audience was largely young foreign tourists – next stop the Tower of London and Madame Tassauds. The woman protestor addressing the crowd even had to appeal for help with her tasks as she was doing the work supposedly assigned to others. I saw nobody rush forward to volunteer to help her.
 
So here I was in the centre of the City of London, to one side the empty tents of the protestors, to the other tourists taking in the sights, yet nowhere to be seen where the people of Britain displaying their anger over the injustices meted out by the greedy Capital of capitalism.
 
When I say the people of Britain I don’t mean those in the tents or those who wrap scarves around their faces to destroy property during riots. I mean the angry “young, middle-aged and old, children in arms and in prams, all classes, the unemployed, those in work and on pensions, marching against the injustice that surrounds us” – the same people I stood amongst in Spain.
 
It is an empty protest outside St Paul’s. It receives a nod from the clerics inside the cathedral, from some politicos and the public’s recognition that they are there. Yet they have failed to capture the mass support of the British public and until or unless they do the Occupy the City movement will be nothing more than a passing tourist attraction.

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on January 14 2012)