These days it's been 15 years since the outbreak of 15-M, that movement that now seems like prehistory to us, like almost everything that happened before the pandemic, and that many of my students don't even remember, partly because they didn't live through it and also because history books take too long to incorporate truly relevant events. And even when they do incorporate them, we look for subterfuges to tread lightly over uncomfortable episodes, as has happened with the systematic burial of democratic memory. That 15-M was, indeed, relevant, for several reasons.
First of all, it wasn't an isolated mobilization, but rather similar events occurred in other countries, such as Greece (the generation of 700 euros in Athens' Syntagma Square) and the United States, with the Occupy Wall Street movement. A few years later, similar movements were replicated in other countries, such as the French Nuit Debout, in 2016. In all of them, the common denominator was 'indignation'. The 'indignant' people of Iceland, one of the mirrors of 15-M, brought down the government that led them to crisis, let the banks fall, and judicially prosecuted those responsible.
There was indignation with the way an economic crisis was managed that, in addition to impoverishing a significant part of the population, bailed out banks that were evicting families while prescribing significant cuts in education, healthcare, and social services. In a context where the corruption of the system's major parties, moreover, distanced citizens from representatives about whom we felt ashamed... 'No hay pan para tanto chorizo' was one of the classic chants in the squares.
No hay pan para tanto chorizo was one of the classic chants in the squares.
Second, 15-M was a social response that allowed people of diverse ideas to come together and imagine and discuss alternatives and put them into practice. The movement not only aimed to challenge the political and economic system in the realm of discourse, but the assemblies in the squares themselves represented a different way of understanding a democracy that should no longer be just the domain of 'politicians': it should also be a participatory democracy.
That exercise of coming together, thinking collectively, and listening to each other had several offshoots. There has been much talk about politics, with the emergence of Podemos and the crisis of bipartisanship, but not so much about other equally important issues. One was the strengthening and expansion of feminism, which incorporated new generations of activists and grew exponentially, becoming a threat to the system. The 'iaioflautes' also set the agenda, and I would dare to say that the struggles for dignified pensions that have been maintained in recent years also grew in that context, alongside the complaints against the fraudsters of the 'preferents' who ruined thousands of elderly people. And on a local level, the Assembly of Teachers and the mobilization of the entire educational community, which led to the largest and most cross-cutting demonstration in the history of the Balearic Islands, just two years after 15-M, also drew from the spirit of the squares. These are just a few examples.
For many people, 15-M was the first citizen school; there they learned the meaning of coming together with others to change things. Of course, there were already other spaces to do this: parties, unions, associations, and formal entities of all kinds… But to what extent were they capable of understanding and managing so much discontent? Do they do it now? Or is it the far-right, absolutely subservient to the interests of the powerful, that takes advantage of this discontent – which still exists?
I fear that 15 years later, the panorama is a bit desolate, but we should keep the lessons of 15-M firmly in mind. The main one is that with the tools of the master, we will never dismantle the master's house, as Audre Lorde taught us. In recent years, the political and social left has replaced the squares, the public and meeting space, with the master's tools: social networks and communication apparatuses that have little to do in a context of fascistoid reaction and capital concentration, including that of the media and social networks with their algorithms. Less communication and more action. Enough of thinking that by posting a story we have made the revolution, while others continue to atomize us and destroy society and shared dreams.
Let's reclaim the squares once again, as a metaphor for any space or excuse that allows us to meet to think and decide collectively about anything. Also about the economy, which is crossing and destroying the lives of so many people and which cannot remain on the sidelines of democracy. Because if we cannot also decide about this – in our case, if you wish, about tourism – it is not democracy. It is in any case, as Varoufakis says, oligarchy with elections. Or, simply, let's get together to take care of ourselves from so much normalized violence, including that of language.
Let's take advantage of this anniversary to rethink ourselves. Long live the 15-M.
