Khenkin Sergey Markovich – ScD in History, Professor, Principal Researcher INION RAN
During the global crisis and in its wake Spain has seen the emergence of many more new reasons for discontent among various groups of the population, as they seek unconventional forms of activism moulded by the Internet and social media, based on horizontal relationships, without leaders or hierarchies. The first such phenomenon is the ”Indignados Movement“ (also referred to as the 15-M Movement), which took over from the Arab Spring and sparked a wave of similar protests across Europe and America. The Indignados in turn were followed by the so-called “waves” (mareas), demonstrations orga-nized by citizens who were employed in the same industry or residing in the same neighbourhood. The same can be said of movements promoting women’s rights, environmental protection and others. These protesters have no intention of taking power or undermining the current social and political system. In-stead, they operate within its framework in a bid to significantly improve and upgrade it. The new type of mass movements in Spain is an integral part of the protests against neoliberal globalization in the West. In challenging the more conventional politics and its actors, they end up implementing different poli-cies and introducing different forms of political participation. While they quite frequently seize the initiative from traditional parties and trade unions, these movements still fail to replace or supplant the latter altogether from big poli-tics. What seems to be lying ahead is a long period of coexistence and competition between the social movements of the new generation on the one hand and traditional actors on the other; one during which they will all face the need to find appropriate responses to the challenges of an ever-changing reality.
Spain, neoliberal globalization, a new type of social move-ments, ”Indignados Movement“, political parties, trade unions
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