When tens of thou­sands of peo­ple occu­pied city squares across Spain in the spring of 2011 as part of the 15M move­ment, their demand was sim­ple: ¡Democ­ra­cy Real Ya!—“a real democ­ra­cy,” instead of the cor­rupt, top-down sys­tem that had failed to address the country’s sky­rock­et­ing fore­clo­sures and unemployment.

An important part of progressives’ recent electoral success can be traced to a strong network of locally organized 'social centers' across Spain. These are spaces where community members can interact and share ideas, whether that means organizing a demonstration, taking Zumba classes or checking out library book.

On Sun­day, May 24, Spain took a huge step towards the kind of rad­i­cal democ­ra­cy that the occu­piers envi­sioned. In munic­i­pal elec­tions, Barcelona, Madrid and sev­er­al oth­er cities elect­ed new may­ors or gov­ern­ments from pro­gres­sive plat­forms that have emerged out of the 15M movement.

In Barcelona, the new may­or is Ada Colau, co-founder of the anti-fore­clo­sure group called the PAH (Platafor­ma de Afec­ta­dos por la Hipoteca/​Platform of Peo­ple Affect­ed by Mort­gages), which has moved fam­i­lies that need hous­ing into emp­ty, bank-owned build­ings. Colau was elect­ed with the back­ing of Barcelona En Comú, a cit­i­zen plat­form that includes groups that came direct­ly out of the 15M move­ment, as well as Podemos, the insur­gent left par­ty that has risen to nation­al promi­nence. And in Madrid, Aho­ra Madrid’s ​“pop­u­lar uni­ty” can­di­date Manuela Car­me­na, a well-respect­ed for­mer judge and labor lawyer, is poised to become may­or once a coali­tion gov­ern­ment is formed.

I trav­eled to Barcelona and Madrid last week with a group of U.S. activists to wit­ness the his­toric elec­tions first­hand and learn from Spain’s inde­pen­dent social move­ments. What I saw was a whole new way of doing pol­i­tics — a mod­el that has the poten­tial to shake up U.S. assump­tions about how to run and fund suc­cess­ful move­ments and campaigns.

Here are six key lessons that U.S. activists and orga­niz­ers can learn from the wins in Spain — ideas to help us build a stronger and more inclu­sive pro­gres­sive move­ment both with­in elec­toral pol­i­tics and out­side them.

1) Move­ments should keep push­ing for rad­i­cal and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy by engag­ing direct­ly with elec­toral pol­i­tics — while also main­tain­ing their inde­pen­dence from estab­lished parties.

In advance of Spain’s munic­i­pal elec­tions, move­ment activists worked with exist­ing polit­i­cal par­ties to cre­ate new ​“con­ver­gence” plat­forms of ​“pop­u­lar uni­ty” specif­i­cal­ly for May 24. Barcelona En Comú and Aho­ra Madrid were not tra­di­tion­al par­ties, but rather a mix of groups work­ing togeth­er — includ­ing Podemos and more local efforts that had come out of 15M and the activism that pre­ced­ed it — while main­tain­ing their own struc­tures and deci­sion-mak­ing process.



Though com­pli­cat­ed and chal­leng­ing, this struc­ture allowed move­ment groups to main­tain their auton­o­my with­out being engulfed by the larg­er par­ty, Podemos. (While many Span­ish activists are encour­aged by the rise of Podemos, they are also quick to remind you that the par­ty did not come from the 15M movement).



The 15M anniver­sary march in Madrid on May 16. (Robert Pluma)

2. Take steps before the vote to make sure the offi­cials you elect will be account­able to the movement.

Barcelona En Comú can­di­dates signed a code of polit­i­cal ethics called ​“Gov­ern­ing by obey­ing,” in which they agreed to a reduced salary and mak­ing their sched­ules and income sources pub­lic. They also pledged to open up local gov­ern­ment, democ­ra­tize gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions and pro­mote increased, direct cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion as a way to strength­en social move­ments and make sure they don’t lose ener­gy post-vic­to­ry. Mari­na Lopez, an activist with Barcelona En Comú, says that now that they have tak­en pow­er in city gov­ern­ment, ​“we have to con­tin­ue to exist as a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion that is close to the cit­i­zens and neigh­bor­hoods… this is our strength.”

When Ada Colau and 10 new City Coun­cil mem­bers took to the stage at the Barcelona En Comú vic­to­ry par­ty on Sun­day, what struck me was that they looked like, well, activists, and not pro­fes­sion­al politi­cians. Colau wore jeans, and the oth­ers looked like they’d been out orga­niz­ing all day, no suits or heels in sight.

Ada Colau and the new City Coun­cil mem­bers onstage. (Robert Pluma)

What these local efforts in Spain have done so far is right­ly say that activists should run for office — but that once elect­ed, they can remain activists push­ing for a more open and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democracy.

Ernesto Gar­cia Lopez, an orga­niz­er with Aho­ra Madrid, says that in addi­tion to work­ing inside the gov­ern­ing coali­tion, he and oth­ers are now focused on show­ing that the out­side move­ment continues.

“We’re going to cre­ate a huge wave of col­lec­tive assem­blies in each neigh­bor­hood in order to cre­ate pres­sure to pow­er local gov­ern­ment by the move­ment and cit­i­zens direct­ly,” he says. ​“If we only think about man­age­ment of new gov­ern­ment, then our idea of rad­i­cal democ­ra­cy is not possible.”

3) Cre­ate phys­i­cal spaces for local orga­niz­ing out­side of exist­ing institutions

An impor­tant part of pro­gres­sives’ recent elec­toral suc­cess can be traced to a strong net­work of local­ly orga­nized ​“social cen­ters” across Spain. These are spaces where com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers can inter­act and share ideas, whether that means orga­niz­ing a demon­stra­tion, tak­ing Zum­ba class­es or check­ing out library book. Many sub­sist on small mem­ber­ship fees or income from a bar or café. Many served as gath­er­ing places for orga­niz­ing 15M after the move­ment decid­ed to end its large-scale occu­pa­tions and focus on build­ing neigh­bor­hood-lev­el power.

In the Unit­ed States, sim­i­lar spaces are much hard­er to find — part­ly because rents are so much high­er in major cities. But some Amer­i­can activists are tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from Spain’s social cen­ters and start­ing their own. Lucas Shapiro, who orga­nized the activist del­e­ga­tion to Spain I took part in, is cre­at­ing the May­day Space in Brook­lyn, with the aim of fos­ter­ing a ​“inter­con­nect­ed move­ment ecosys­tem” where dif­fer­ent projects and peo­ple can over­lap, share ideas and shift the polit­i­cal ter­rain. Shapiro, who spent time at the social cen­ter Ateneu Can­dela in Ter­ras­sa, Spain, says that these cen­ters ​“cre­ate a cul­tur­al cur­rent with­in a city that rein­forces the autonomous spir­it of resistance.”

4) Ques­tion the pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion of move­ment organizing

Two words we nev­er heard in Spain were ​“staff” and ​“vol­un­teer.” Almost every orga­niz­er we met — whether for a group, move­ment or cam­paign — was doing the work in their free time, with­out an insti­tu­tion­al affil­i­a­tion or paycheck.

Luis Moreno-Cabal­lud, an activist and pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia from Spain who took part in our del­e­ga­tion, points out that in the Unit­ed States, the paid ver­sus unpaid dis­tinc­tion can cre­ate a sep­a­ra­tion between ​“pro­fes­sion­al” activists and vol­un­teers or peo­ple affect­ed by an issue. In Spain, there are not paid staff who tell vol­un­teers what to do — the vol­un­teers are the lead­ers, with much more deci­sion-mak­ing power.

I’ve found, too, that the large insti­tu­tions and amounts of mon­ey involved in U.S. polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing can some­times make it hard to fig­ure out if we’re doing the work we want to do, or the work that we can get fund­ed. And the focus on fund­ing can cre­ate an atmos­phere of com­pe­ti­tion for grants and resources.

While it’s tempt­ing to roman­ti­cize the puri­ty of get­ting mon­ey out of pol­i­tics — break free of cap­i­tal­ism! — Spain’s mod­el has its own draw­backs. Orga­niz­ers in the Unit­ed States can get paid for doing move­ment work we care about, and with­out fund­ing, for many of us that would not be pos­si­ble. And with an unem­ploy­ment rate above 40 per­cent for young peo­ple in Spain, I sus­pect that many Span­ish activists would not object to get­ting paid for doing work that gen­er­al­ly aligns with their values.

But Moreno-Cabal­lud sug­gests explor­ing alter­na­tives to insti­tu­tion­al or big-donor fund­ing. ​“It can be pow­er­ful when you see you can do things with­out mon­ey,” he says. He sug­gests that U.S. activists can look at strate­gies of mutu­al aid and build­ing a social econ­o­my — where orga­niz­ers exchange goods and ser­vices — or an alter­na­tive econ­o­my, through activist-run book­stores or bars.

A vol­un­teer move­ment means, too, that more time can be spent orga­niz­ing instead of writ­ing grants or fundrais­ing. As Lucía Lois Mén­dez de Vigo from the Patio Mar­avil­las social cen­ter in Madrid told us, ​“We have one meet­ing a year to talk about mon­ey.” As some­one who’s spent count­less hours writ­ing fundrais­ing emails and call­ing donors to ask for mon­ey, that sounds like a pret­ty great idea.

From what I saw, the lack of pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion in Spain’s social jus­tice move­ment also seemed to cre­ate a cul­ture that is less ego-dri­ven. For the most part, orga­niz­ing jobs don’t exist, and there isn’t a career lad­der — so peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly doing things with their spare time because it’s what they want to be doing and believe in, and they aren’t assessed based on title or orga­ni­za­tion, but rep­u­ta­tion and work they’ve done.

5) Inject some cre­ativ­i­ty into our elec­toral campaigns

Elec­tions in the U.S. are fast becom­ing more a sci­ence than an art, with a focus on exact­ly how many times a vot­er needs to be con­tact­ed, in what ways and with which words. Yet for all our data-dri­ven sophis­ti­ca­tion, as I saw the cam­paign­ing hap­pen­ing in Spain I couldn’t help but feel like our U.S. cam­paigns are, by com­par­i­son, a lit­tle rote and lifeless.

A week before the elec­tion in Madrid, I joined Aho­ra Madrid for a ​“walk­ing tour” of the gen­tri­fy­ing neigh­bor­hood of Malasaña. But it was more like a parade, led by bikes fly­ing Aho­ra Madrid flags and speak­ers blast­ing cam­paign songs. Every few blocks, we paused, and a speak­er explained through the bull­horn what was hap­pen­ing in the neigh­bor­hood. Peo­ple gave out fly­ers and but­tons, talked to passers­by and put up stick­ers. Up at the front, some­one rolled a 7‑foot inflat­able blue plas­tic ball embla­zoned with the campaign’s demand, Agua Pub­li­ca, through the nar­row cob­ble­stone streets.

We shouldn’t aban­don what’s been proven to be effec­tive to get vot­ers to the polls. But what Podemos and these local plat­forms have man­aged to do is use imag­i­na­tion and humor to com­plete­ly trans­form the sense of what’s polit­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble in Spain. As one Podemos ban­ner reads, ​“When was the last time you vot­ed with hope?”

6) Put fem­i­nism and women’s lead­er­ship front and center

Sunday’s local elec­tion results broke new ground for women in Spain. Ada Colau is the first female may­or of Barcelona — in a region of Spain, Cat­alo­nia, where pre­vi­ous­ly only 14.2 per­cent of cities were run by women. Six of the 11 peo­ple elect­ed to munic­i­pal offices on the Barcelona En Comú tick­et are women, and one, Lau­ra Perez, is a well-known fem­i­nist leader.

That’s no acci­dent: The cam­paigns had an explic­it­ly fem­i­nist agen­da that includes fight­ing the ​“fem­i­niza­tion” of pover­ty and expand­ing our gen­dered ideas of lead­er­ship. Sev­er­al of the orga­niz­ers I spoke with talked about get­ting away from the tra­di­tion­al idea of a male leader who speaks loud­ly and con­fi­dent­ly and tells every­one what to do, and mov­ing more towards a style of coop­er­a­tion, dis­cus­sion and lis­ten­ing. In her elec­tion night speech, Ada Colau focused on thank­ing the ​“com­mon” peo­ple — the peo­ple who did the work of car­ing for the kids and mak­ing the food. Fem­i­nists, she said, have shown that there’s anoth­er way to do politics.



The Barcelona En Comú vic­to­ry par­ty on May 24. (Robert Pluma)

Many activists in the Unit­ed States feel that we have to choose one of two options: Suck it up and com­pro­mise to help a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty we aren’t always ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with, or sit on the side­lines of elec­toral pol­i­tics. But Spain shows a third way is pos­si­ble — a social move­ment can take part in pol­i­tics while main­tain­ing its activist iden­ti­ty and independence.

Of course, the con­text is dif­fer­ent in the Unit­ed States. Before Occu­py Wall Street, Spain’s 15M move­ment took hold in a deep­er way than Occu­py did in the Unit­ed States. It start­ed in 2011 with the 15M move­ment of Indig­na­dos—the Out­raged — protest­ing the way Spain had been con­trolled by a two-par­ty sys­tem for over 30 years; out­raged at politi­cians’ fail­ure to respond to the severe eco­nom­ic cri­sis, ram­pant cor­rup­tion and sky­rock­et­ing fore­clo­sures and unem­ploy­ment. And it led to a fun­da­men­tal change in Spain’s polit­i­cal land­scape, with an explo­sion of new activist groups, orga­niz­ing spaces and polit­i­cal parties.

While Spain’s par­lia­men­tary sys­tem means that cre­at­ing new par­ties is eas­i­er than in the U.S., local elec­tions in par­tic­u­lar often present a more open field. City Coun­cil elec­tions in places like Chica­go and Los Ange­les are non-par­ti­san, and could be a space for sim­i­lar move­ment-dri­ven coali­tions like we saw in Spain. In build­ing them, we should look to the 15M move­ment as a mod­el for cre­at­ing the kind of rad­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy we thought we could only imagine.