Citizens, Squatters, Homeowners and Tenants: Housing Activism and the Structures of Democratization and Capitalism in Spain

• Autores: Miguel A. Martínez
• Localización: The Routledge Hispanic studies companion to twentieth and twenty-first century Spain: ideas, practices, imaginings / coord. por Eduardo Ledesma, Luisa Elena Delgado, 2025, ISBN 978-1-032-96468-3, págs. 49-62
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The transitional period to a recovered democratic regime in Spain during the late 1970s was substantially shaped by large working-class mobilizations in the domains of production and reproduction (unpaid housework, access to housing, urban facilities, etc.). The so-called “citizens’ movement” championed urban struggles in addition to demands for a democratic political regime. Despite their rapid decline in the 1980s, these movements left a significant mark in the process of democratization and fueled the right to protest of the social movements that followed. The 1986 integration of Spain into supranational European institutions engendered a new stage of capitalist development and neoliberal policies. Real estate speculation in major cities became the main driver of urban change and shaped the conditions for the emergence and growth of new grassroots and anti-capitalist activism such as the squatter movement (okupas). In addition to the occupation of houses, squatters showed their capacity to self-manage squatted social centers and to aggregate various social movements. Simultaneously squatters called attention to the new cycle of capitalist accumulation in Spanish and European cities alike. With transnational waves of protest and rapid economic changes, the alter-globalization and anti-war movements in the early 2000s, first, and the Occupy and anti-austerity uprisings in the early 2010s, next, sparked new housing mobilizations in Spain. The effects of the global financial crisis in terms of unemployment, indebtedness and home evictions were followed by broad grassroots contestation. Housing groups associated with neighborhood assemblies, the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH) and tenants’ unions took the lead on lengthy campaigns led primarily by women and migrants. This chapter provides a long-term historical account of the housing struggles in Spain since the 1970s by identifying the main features of these forms of collective action and the political economy context with which they interacted. In particular, I argue that these expressions of housing activism were not only closely related to other social movements but, above all, were dependent on specific structural conditions of the Spanish political, economic and housing system. My analysis also contributes to the interpretations of the changing sociological components of housing struggles in relation to the societal context at large.