With the Spanish general election just over a month away, the eight-year rule of the Socialist party will soon come to an end. José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will be ousted and the opposition leader Mariano Rajoy finally elevated to the place he thought deserved since 2004. Business as usual for Spanish politics; the normal political give-and-take of the last 30 years between the two main parties. But, with 20% unemployment (40% among the youth) and the looming possibility that the country's finances might have to face an intervention, things in Spain these days are anything but normal.

Enter the Spanish indignados, or, as they are also known here, the 15-M movement (the protest was launched with a gathering on 15 May, one week before local elections). Five months into the long "Spanish spring" of 2011, we've seen how what started as a small, inarticulate and youth-centred movement has transformed itself into what some here call the most interesting political development since the death of Franco in 1975.

A hybrid and novel experiment of online and offline activism that has steered clear of the traditional and weary avenues of political engagement, the 15-M movement was the harbinger of the massive Israeli protests in the summer and the Occupy Wall Street movement taking shape in the US.

The movement has studiously avoided engaging with ideological agendas, unions and, most importantly, professional politicians. It has filled city squares, co-ordinated online actions and targeted specific topics like banking and electoral reform. It has experimented with bottom-up networked approaches to challenge the rigid, top-down, party driven system that has dominated Spanish political life since 1978. City square by city square, individual meeting by individual meeting, thousands of citizens have come together in a networked approach to politics that is fresh and engaging because it defies, above anything else, the hierarchical approach favoured by vested interests.

The movement's strategy is based on assembling ad hoc citizen coalitions to help push back and challenge specific government actions; trying to figure out how to affect policy by exerting force on specific choke points in the system that badly needs reform. Politicians worried about intra-party politics, re-election or special interests can't see the importance of this. It's about using the power of the network to break entrenched silos and find ways to make the political process more responsive to the needs of everyday citizens.

So, for example, the movement has been actively engaged with foreclosure associations that advise homeowners across Spain. Common sightings across Spanish cities these days are groups of enraged neighbours holding guard outside buildings to impede judges from notifying, and therefore kicking out, debt-ridden flat owners. Most of these actions pop up spontaneously after information is exchanged on Twitter and then co-ordinated through the use of hashtags.

Is this a long-term solution to Spain's debt problems? Certainly not. But actions such as these are starting to change the perception and the dynamics between citizens, government regulators and economic interests. Furthermore, they are forcing politicians to reconsider how they take part in the policy-making process – a growing trend here is public officials voluntarily disclosing assets. They are turning into a reality what Harvard scholar Yochai Benkler presciently called in 2006 the "networked public sphere".

In August, when bond traders were battering Spain, and politicians from the two main parties met in Madrid to agree on a constitutional reform that self-imposed a spending cap – they hadn't agreed on almost anything in eight years – protests erupted within a few hours of the announcement. Offline and online, the network kicked in. In a matter of hours, squares were being filled and Actuable, a political activism site, had gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures demanding that the reform be voted in a national referendum. To quote communication scholar Manuel Castells, "the disgust became a network".

Today, a month ahead of the Spanish general election on November 20, the movement will take to the streets once again. It will co-ordinate a worldwide protest that will span from Wall Street to Israel and dozens of other cities along the way. The indignados have succeeded so far in revealing a side of Spain that few thought existed: a resilient and politicised public willing to get involved to change the modus operandi of the system. The disruptive power of networked politics, in other words, has been revealed.

The next step is to start thinking in terms of outcomes. Not in the traditional electoral sense – it won't change the result of the election, nor should it try to. It needs to redefine goals, metrics and ways to interpret and understand government accountability and political participation. It needs to create a sense of hope among the general public that, alongside the established tired politics of old – which we still need, otherwise Spain would become like Egypt or Tunisia – a new layer of political participation is collectively being woven.