Spanish Municipal Elections 2015 – P2P Foundation https://blog.p2pfoundation.net Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Mon, 15 Jun 2015 08:05:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 62076519 24M: It was not a victory for Podemos, but for the 15M movement https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/24m-it-was-not-a-victory-for-podemos-but-for-the-15m-movement-2/2015/06/15 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/24m-it-was-not-a-victory-for-podemos-but-for-the-15m-movement-2/2015/06/15#respond Mon, 15 Jun 2015 11:00:52 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=50551 X-net‘s Simona Levi reflects on the recent results of the Spanish Municipal Elections and seeks to correct some popular misconceptions resulting from international press coverage on the role of Podemos. The propaganda has spread far and wide, and we are concerned to note how many analysts, particularly foreign media outlets without local correspondents, are giving... Continue reading

The post 24M: It was not a victory for Podemos, but for the 15M movement appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
Click on the image to see full size

Click on the image to see full size. Source: autoconsulta.org.


X-net‘s Simona Levi reflects on the recent results of the Spanish Municipal Elections and seeks to correct some popular misconceptions resulting from international press coverage on the role of Podemos.


The propaganda has spread far and wide, and we are concerned to note how many analysts, particularly foreign media outlets without local correspondents, are giving Podemos undue centrality.

This text seeks to clarify the current state of the unfolding Spanish r-evolution, so that its major contribution to global change will not be lost among obsolete, simplistic models.

On May 24, civil society won a magnificent victory in Spain.

It was an intelligent, thoughtful, constructive victory in the true style of the indignados.

The definitions of what the indignados movement is are as numerous as the people who participated in it; and there have also been some deliberate misinterpretations of what it is.

For us, the spirit that allowed the indignados movement to be born and grow can be summed up in its own words: “Some of us see ourselves as more progressive, others more conservative…” leaving no doubt that 15M would be a pragmatic rather than an ideological movement. This is the key to its success. The left had been calling for rebellion for years, with few results. So whether we like it or not, the indignados achieved what the left couldn’t, precisely because it was not foundationally ideological.

The great political innovation of the indignados was forged on the basis of this transversality and pragmatism, in the first month and a half in the squares (stage one of the indignados). The movement was politicised but not ideological, constructive, not limited to protest. It was a movement that identified some minimum criteria on which to build a ‘real democracy’ (the famous ‘minimum criteria’ documents were drawn up in the first month).

During that first month we learnt to organise as citizens, to trust in our shared capacities and competencies rather than dogma, to accept responsibility and to assess results based on facts rather than rhetoric.

And the indignados movement has continued on this basis, in the second stage, in everything we have done and are doing, splitting into dozens of citizen devices and chalking up successes such as the PAH (platform to support victims of mortgage scams and of evictions), 15MpaRato (a citizen initiative that led to the arrest and trial of the former director of the IMF Rodrigo Rato and 100 other politicians and bankers for the banking swindle), the Citizen Debt Audit Network, the ‘White Tide’ (movement for universal healthcare and against privatisation) and all the other ‘tides’, Legal Sol (legal defense of basic rights, freedom of expression, and demonstrators)…

@PabloMP2P

The second phase of the indignados movement

The indignados movement is what we have kept doing ever since.

Back then, on 15 May 2011 – and not now or in 2014 with the rise of Podemos – we declared that part of our plan was to bring down the two-party system.

And since then, we’ve made progress in this regard: Aritmetica20N (2011);Partido X (2013); Podemos (2014); Barcelona en Comú (2015); AhoraMadrid(2015); Marea Atlántica (2015); Compostela Aberta (2015); Terrassa en Comú(2015); Capgirem (2015); … it isn’t the names that matter, but the patience and tenacity to keep going, adapting methods in order to achieve our collective goals on this and other regards.

This is why we are concerned by recent declarations in which Pablo Iglesias takes credit for a collective victory on behalf of Podemos.

Some examples:

Manuela Carmena and most of the citizens behind the electoral platform Ahora Madrid are not members of Podemos; Manuela barely held any rallies with Podemos, and many of the members of Ahora Madrid are indignados or activists in general and don’t have anything to do with Podemos. They are there to participate in designing a new city.

Likewise, Barcelona En Comú is not Podemos, nor is Ada Colau. Ada has fought side by side with activists in innumerable struggles in Barcelona over the past 15 years. The first thing she said to the people who had gathered to celebrate the victory of Barcelona En Comú is that it would not have been possible without the struggles that came before; she emphasised that a new kind of politics will not be possible without a strong, organised civil society, independent of any electoral platform, that will hold city councils and other public institutions to account. She called for us to be autonomous and vigilant, rather than merging with her.

The attitude of these new electoral platforms is worlds away from the attitude of Podemos so far towards civil society groups, which it has repeatedly called to join its ranks and dissolve into it.

The Podemos leadership style seems to repeatedly turn to a tactic destined to confuse involving a reinterpretation and claiming authorship of collective struggles. Some other thoroughly collective and distributed struggles of the past, such as the response to the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, and the struggle against evictions under the slogan ‘Yes we can’, which Podemos also used as its slogan for its founding assembly, are examples of this among many.

Podemos website featuring Ada Colau and Manuela Carmena without their consent. They have repeatedly said they are not members.

New Politics

We don’t believe that these are simply superficial details.

We are convinced that it will be impossible to make progress and continue on our common path if we limit options rather than harnessing this great opportunity to expand them.

Our history has seen fratricidal situations; in 1936-37 for example. They were much more tragic, but resonate in terms of political praxis. It would be criminal to repeat the same mistakes. To homogenise the diversity on this side of the trenches won’t improve our chances of success: it will destroy them.

We want a world in which, at last, organised and diverse civil society is as relevant as political parties, if not even more so.

In this context, it is important that Podemos resists the temptation to impose itself as hegemonic in a much broader r-evolution.

The indignados movement calls for relationships of mutual support. Theindignados hasn’t started from scratch, it works jointly with what civil society has already achieved. We don’t have enough spare energy or resources to allow us the luxury of starting over again as if nothing ever came before.

We have to increase our competencies and the fronts we’re fighting on, not implode into a single brand.

Podemos alone cannot and should not represent Everything. To continue to try to do so could be the end of them, as Isaac Rosa explains in this article “Sí se puede, pero solos no Podemos” (“For example: in Madrid, 285,000 people voted for Podemos in the autonomous community elections, while 519,000 voted for Ahora Madrid. In other words, almost half of Ahora Madrid voters did not vote for Podemos at the other level of governments (note: the elections were on the same day and in the same place).”

Podemos was not in the indignados movement.

We need Podemos. It is another comrade in our struggle.

Podemos, whose founders have hardly been involved in the 15M, and which doesn’t share its founding ideas, has intelligently harnessed the energy generated by the indignados to give rise to an electoral platform that had been brewing for years in the media.

http://www.manuelalucas.com/sre/

Podemos has contributed what it can to the expanding indignados movement: media power, the potential to reach millions of viewers.

We believe that if Podemos truly wants to be an instrument of popular will, of the spirit of the indignados, it should also celebrate the success of others. A hegemonic discourse that claims that organised civil society is only useful if it is inside the party brand, and that everything outside of it could threaten its leadership, can no longer stand up, luckily, amongst an empowered citizenry that is conscious of its responsibilities, the citizenry we have built with theIndignados.

Nor is it desirable for such a discourse to work. We do not want a passive civil society, like the society that the PSOE tamed in the eighties, absorbing the most highly profiled (not always the best) citizen activists into the party, as has been repeated by Izquierda Unida more recently.

Podemos is an important device for the change we want, and we hope that it will thrive among equals. The millions of organised citizens who are writing the future of 15M are ready to give and receive support based on mutual trust, because our goals can only be achieved if all of us who got down to work on 15 May 2011, and in subsequent years, keep on working.

For the r-evolution that began that day, the squares were important in 2011; diverse citizen devices in 2012-13; Podemos in 2014; and in 2015, municipal electoral platforms. In 2016, we’ll adopt whatever means are necessary to continue our work. With pragmatism and generosity.

Many opportunists climbed aboard Podemos after its success in 2014. It seems like treacherous terrain now. But there are also many valued, generous comrades who are using the opportunity that Podemos has provided to work towards the shared commitments of the indignados, just as Podemos has used the opportunity that the indignados movement opened up for them.

It is a luxury to work with these valuable people, and we know that organised citizens can rely on their support, just as they can rely on ours.

It is vital that this give and take of activism and cooperation should proliferate inside and beyond electoral platforms. The victory on 24 May has shown that we are on the right track, and that the last 4 years have only been the first stage in this era that is full of hope.

Thanks to Kate Shea Baird and Nuria Rodríguez for the translation.

The post 24M: It was not a victory for Podemos, but for the 15M movement appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/24m-it-was-not-a-victory-for-podemos-but-for-the-15m-movement-2/2015/06/15/feed 0 50551
With P2P: Spain’s ‘citizen candidates’ shake up politics https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/with-p2p-spains-citizen-candidates-shake-up-politics/2015/05/24 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/with-p2p-spains-citizen-candidates-shake-up-politics/2015/05/24#comments Sun, 24 May 2015 18:37:52 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=50283 With the election results only a few hours away, we’d like to finish today’s coverage with an extract from Katharine Ainger‘s excellent Al-Jazeera article entitled “Spain’s ‘citizen candidates’ shake up politics“. In preparation for the article Ainger contacted P2P Foundation co-founder Michel Bauwens for some feedback. Bauwens told Al Jazeera given historical problems with monolithic... Continue reading

The post With P2P: Spain’s ‘citizen candidates’ shake up politics appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
A man gestures with his mouth gagged as dozens of protesters shout slogans before local elections [AP]

A man gestures with his mouth gagged as dozens of protesters shout slogans before local elections [AP]

With the election results only a few hours away, we’d like to finish today’s coverage with an extract from Katharine Ainger‘s excellent Al-Jazeera article entitledSpain’s ‘citizen candidates’ shake up politics“. In preparation for the article Ainger contacted P2P Foundation co-founder Michel Bauwens for some feedback.


Bauwens told Al Jazeera given historical problems with monolithic political parties on the one hand, and problems with direct democratic assemblies on the other, “the most realistic option is to combine electoral democracy with new forms of deliberative and participative democracy”.

With numerous figures from both traditional major parties in Spain embroiled in corruption scandals, there has been a collapse of public trust for conventional politicians. This crisis of political legitimacy is exacerbated by the second highest unemployment rate in Europe, low wages, and anger against cuts to social welfare. As a result the country’s bipartisan system is being eroded, in many different directions.

This is the context in which Barcelona en Comú and sister coalitions are contesting Sunday’s municipal elections in towns and cities across the country, from Galicia to the Canary Islands. They are polling best in Spain’s two largest cities, Madrid and Barcelona. In many cases allied with anti-austerity party Podemos, and using crowdsourced electoral platforms, social activists are running for office under names such as Ahora Madrid (Madrid Now) and Zaragoza en Comun (Zaragoza in Common).

Javier Toret, the developer of Barcelona en Comú’s online participation platforms, said he is influenced by theorists such as Michel Bauwens, who is working in the field of peer-to-peer technology to create new forms of democracy.

Bauwens told Al Jazeera given historical problems with monolithic political parties on the one hand, and problems with direct democratic assemblies on the other, “the most realistic option is to combine electoral democracy with new forms of deliberative and participative democracy”.

With new technology it is now easier and cheaper than ever before for citizens to vote on almost any issue in the running of their cities. Toret was particularly inspired by web tools from Reykjavik in Iceland, where users proposed and debated policies online, took budgetary decisions, and voted on neighbourhood issues.

Using a similar model, 1,000 people took part online in the creation of Barcelona en Comú’s ethical code. Aimed at increasing transparency and avoiding corruption, the code limits wages to 26,400 euros ($29,000) a year for all party officials – thereby slashing the mayor’s salary by more than 100,000 euros ($110,100) – and commits them to full transparency, including publishing all meetings and income sources, and to “promote and support all citizen initiatives”.

Click here to read the full article

The post With P2P: Spain’s ‘citizen candidates’ shake up politics appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/with-p2p-spains-citizen-candidates-shake-up-politics/2015/05/24/feed 1 50283
The Prospects for Radical Democracy in Spain https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-prospects-for-radical-democracy-in-spain/2015/05/24 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-prospects-for-radical-democracy-in-spain/2015/05/24#respond Sun, 24 May 2015 14:30:45 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=50275 Continuing our series on Spain’s all-important municipal elections, we are happy to present this article, originally published in In These Times, and authored by Vicente Rubio Pueyo and Pablo La Parra The upcoming municipal elections will be a key test for the rising leftist movement in Spain. “Do you hear the buzz? The buzz says: let’s... Continue reading

The post The Prospects for Radical Democracy in Spain appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
A rally for Ahora Madrid in April. (Ahora Madrid / Flickr)

A rally for Ahora Madrid in April. (Ahora Madrid / Flickr)

Continuing our series on Spain’s all-important municipal elections, we are happy to present this article, originally published in In These Times, and authored by Vicente Rubio Pueyo and Pablo La Parra


The upcoming municipal elections will be a key test for the rising leftist movement in Spain.

“Do you hear the buzz? The buzz says: let’s defend the common good.” These are the lyrics of the campaign song of Barcelona en Comú–one of the new “confluence” platforms of “popular unity” running in the May 24th municipal elections in Spain, sung (with the help of autotune) to the rhythm of a popular Catalán rumba by its candidate, Ada Colau. According to pre-election polls, Colau is poised to win the mayoral election in Barcelona this Sunday.

Colau is part of a rising electoral insurgency across Spain by candidates trying to reimagine radical democracy, drawing from social movements to create a new participatory style of “governance by listening.” Four years ago, the May 15 movement appeared during the campaign for municipal and regional elections. Then, the characterization of the movement by many politicians and mainstream media oscillated between patronizing and condescending, along the lines of, “If these kids want to achieve anything, they should organize a party, and run for elections.”

Four years later, the political landscape has changed. As a popular slogan puts it, “Fear has changed sides.” Or perhaps happiness and hope have changed sides, as Spaniards finally have a political alternative to austerity. The emergence of PODEMOS in the European parliament elections one year ago was the first electoral manifestation of a growing political shift to the left in Spain. The buzz could be heard by anyone in the streets, in the plazas, in every mobilization in defense of public education and healthcare, in every neighborhood. Today, several cities and numerous smaller towns are running candidates from these new political parties, with elections on May 24.

From outside of Spain, it’s easy to conflate all the post-15M new electoral alternatives under PODEMOS. But the reality is more complex. On May 24, there will be two elections in Spain. One is the regional elections, which will take place in every “autonomous community” (the Spanish term) except four. PODEMOS is running electoral candidates at the regional level. This process has shown a rich diversity among the party itself. Pablo Echenique, for example, is now running for the Aragón regional government. Nicknamed “the other Pablo of PODEMOS” (in relation to Pablo Iglesias, PODEMOS’s Secretary-General), Echenique is prominent within the party as a strong advocate for participatory methods in constructing the party’s program.

“This participatory ethos is the heart and soul of the confluence candidacies: from online primaries to configuring electoral rolls to the collective composition of the party’s platform through open assemblies in each neighborhood.”

At the local electoral level, a series of experiments in constructing movement-influenced electoral platforms are taking place. In these so-called “confluence” processes, PODEMOS is one force among many. Confluence forces have become important new players in the upcoming local elections. In addition to the aforementioned possibility of a mayoral victory in Barcelona, polls this week point to a technical tie in Madrid between the ruling Popular Party and Ahora Madrid (loosely affiliated with Podemos), which would allow its candidate, Manuela Carmena, to become mayor of the capital city with the support of other forces. There are similar possibilities for parallel initiatives in other major cities throughout the country: Zaragoza en Común, València en Comú or Málaga Ahora, among others.

What does this confluence mean? How does it work? What are the ingredients of these new municipal initiatives? The “confluence candidacies” bring together a wide spectrum of participants: from grassroots activists to members of Left political parties, from well-known scholars to common citizens from diverse professional backgrounds. Rather than reproducing the traditional “electoral coalition” model (the tactical merger of a group of parties that preserve their strong, visible identities), the confluence logic is based on the idea of the “non-hierarchical encounter.”

Take, for instance, the case of Barcelona en Comú. The parties and individuals willing to join this initiative agreed to a “Code of Political Ethics,” which had been previously discussed, amended and approved in an open, online debate. This participatory ethos is the heart and soul of the confluence candidacies: from online primaries to configuring electoral rolls to the collective composition of the party’s platform through open assemblies in each neighborhood. No longer a top-down politics of opaque pacts and closed policy platforms, but an open-source process based on grassroots collective participation.

Manuela Carmena and Ada Colau themselves are good examples of the heterogeneity of the people involved in these political experiments. Carmena, a 71-year-old retired judge, has a long history of political judicial work, from her involvement with the clandestine movement of labor lawyers involved in the anti-Francisco Franco workers’ movement to her later defense of inmates’ human rights in Spanish prisons, or her work to guarantee social housing to evicted people in Madrid. Colau is a 41-year-old social activist, co-founder and former spokesperson of the PAH (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages), undoubtedly one of the most tenacious and innovative grassroots social movements developed in Spain during the recent economic crisis.

The generational span and complementary trajectories of Carmena and Colau hints at the dialogue between different activist traditions underlying these municipal movements–as when Carmena praised the contributions of the squatter movement in Madrid or Colau reclaimed the memory of the proletarian neighborhood struggles of the 20th century in Barcelona.

Both Carmena and Colau were elected through open and participatory processes, and both have put into practice a logic of leadership that looks quite different from traditional electoral spectacles and entrenched authority. As Colau argued in a recent interview, participation has to be understood “not as a top-down concession but as a way to rule,” thus it is necessary to develop non-patriarchal modes of leadership inspired by feminist and ecological thought. Similarly, Carmena has repeatedly criticized traditional political rallies, instead promoting what she calls close “encounters” with neighbors.

“Ahora” (“now”) and “En Comú” (“in common”) have been recurring themes in most confluence candidacies. On the one hand, “Now” summarizes the sense of urgency in recovering basic social rights and, more so, overturning the neoliberal model of urban growth that has been the model for Spanish cities over the last decades. After almost 25 years under conservative rule, Madrid has become one of the most aggressive laboratories of neoliberal privatization throughout Europe, propelled by a conglomerate of political power, major construction companies and financial interests–repeatedly proven corrupt–that have overtaken basic public infrastructure such as hospitals and water access.

The apparently kinder, social democrat/nationalist-ruled model of Barcelona is perhaps one of the most exemplary cases of the effects of branding in a city’s everyday life: streets have been turned into shop windows for tourist consumption, while spectacular buildings coexist with one of the highest eviction rates in all of Spain. Confluence forces advocate for a profound shift in this model of urban development, rooted in social economy and sustainable practices.

On the other hand, “In Common” appeals to the demands for extended participation within the political institutions that 15M first put forward. The programs of these citizen platforms are packed with proposals for newer forms of political accountability, transparency and the use of both online and in-person assembly methods of deliberation in the elections of district representatives, among many other developments. Although focused on immediate needs, and thus pragmatic and realistic in many of their proposals, these programs also convey an open-ended character focused on defending and democratizing the public domain. These forces have an experimental character that goes beyond the anti-austerity Left’s usual reactive framework: in their combination of audacity, openness and realism, these new political projects represent not so much a simple “return of the Left”–or, at least, of the Left as we knew it–but the building blocks of a whole new political constellation.

The political scenario after the upcoming regional and municipal elections this Sunday remains uncertain, although some indications for major changes are at stake. If Ahora Madrid and Barcelona en Comú finally win the elections in the two major Spanish cities, what potentials and limits will they find operating at a municipal scale? Are Madrid and Barcelona at the brink of a new definition of municipal autonomy, popular empowerment and a grassroots reactivation of the right to the city? To what extent would a hypothetical new political landscape in the regional elections influence PODEMOS’s strategy towards the November 2015 general elections, at a moment when many critical voices are reclaiming a critical examination of the “middle-classist” turn of the party?

PODEMOS started from the top tier of the European parliament elections to try to produce change at the state level, while these municipal confluence forces have started from the local level. The elections tomorrow and over the next few months will determine if these two distinct approaches can intertwine in order to prepare for the fall elections. Meanwhile, the buzz keeps getting louder.

Vicente Rubio Pueyo and Pablo La Parra are affiliated with the NYC to Spain delegation.

The post The Prospects for Radical Democracy in Spain appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-prospects-for-radical-democracy-in-spain/2015/05/24/feed 0 50275
Video of the Day: Buzzing for the Commons in Madrid https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/video-of-the-day-buzzing-for-the-commons-in-madrid/2015/05/24 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/video-of-the-day-buzzing-for-the-commons-in-madrid/2015/05/24#respond Sun, 24 May 2015 12:54:29 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=50273 Today, as municipal elections take place throughout the Spanish State we wanted to present a series of posts reflecting the new citizen-led electoral coalitions spawned out of the 15-M Movement. First up is this inspiring video, originally shared by Cecilia Barriga on Vimeo and featuring an impassioned Ada Colau (who’s running for mayor in Barcelona)... Continue reading

The post Video of the Day: Buzzing for the Commons in Madrid appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
Today, as municipal elections take place throughout the Spanish State we wanted to present a series of posts reflecting the new citizen-led electoral coalitions spawned out of the 15-M Movement.

First up is this inspiring video, originally shared by Cecilia Barriga on Vimeo and featuring an impassioned Ada Colau (who’s running for mayor in Barcelona) describing the buzz created around her Madrid-based municipalist counterpart, Manuela Carmena.

Madrid, It buzzes for the people from cecilia barriga on Vimeo.

The post Video of the Day: Buzzing for the Commons in Madrid appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]>
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/video-of-the-day-buzzing-for-the-commons-in-madrid/2015/05/24/feed 0 50273