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Deadlocks or Breakthroughs?

Tracing the Movement of Indignación

Abstract

In the light of severe crises and stark politicizations, Spain stands, yet

again, on the bridge between the European and Arab juncture. The

movement of indignación (indignation) questions Spain’s state of affairs

and brings manifold demands to the fore. In this article, I trace the

pathways of Spain’s wave of protests. My thesis is that Spain exhibits a sui

generis laboratory that interlaces two parallel developments. First, the

current politicization conveys a threefold crisis of Spain’s political system,

neo-liberalism and Left forces. Second, the movement of indignación –

putting forward a subversive populist strategy – renews pleads for a

sovereign ‘people’ that query the status quo from within. To do justice to

these processes, I advance a particular approach, whose concepts,

inherited from Marxism and post-structuralism, are grouped around the

intuition of an ‘ironic historicism’. In addition to describing Spain’s

present state of affairs, I outline the historical roots of this ‘Spanish

Labyrinth’ and thus stick to a genealogical reading of Spain’s current

situation.

Key words

hegemony, ideology, Marxism, neo-liberalism, populism, social

movements, social theory, Spain

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A hurricane of farcicality, everywhere and in every form, is at present raging over the lands of Europe. (…) The only efforts that are being made are to escape from our real destiny, to blind ourselves to its evidence, to be deaf of its deep appeal, to avoid facing up to what has to be. We are living in a comic fashion, all the more comic the more apparently tragic is the mask adopted. (José Ortega y Gasset, 1994, 105) We are sleeping on a volcano. Do you not see that the earth trembles anew? A wind of revolution blows. The storm is on the horizon (Alexis de Tocqueville, in Hobsbawm, 1996b, 9)

I. Introduction

The two leitmotifs of the present article have been cut out from their original

historical context. The former quotation, from Ortega, was written in the anxious

inter-war period and aimed at a general diagnosis of its zeitgeist (Tuñón de Lara, 1973)

whereas the latter, from Tocqueville, refers back to the bourgeois revolutions of 1848.

All the same, if read in a naive and decontextualized way, the quotations could well

express our contemporary state of affairs. On the southern side of the Mediterranean,

the Arab Spring stands up for core democratic ideals: liberty and equality. In this and

in its passionate, collective enthusiasm, the Arab Spring resembles the European

revolutions of the 19th century envisaged by Tocqueville. Standing in stark contrast,

Ortega saw the Europe of the 1920s in the midst of a decline that spread over

political, economic and social realms. In a certain way, Ortega’s observations could

also pinpoint our contemporary state of affairs (Buarque, 2011). Where is fervour for

the European project, for liberal ideals or for a lifestyle revolving around flexibility in

labour and cocooning in leisure? If seen from a pessimistic viewpoint, Ortega’s

dictum could hold true yet again. In Western Europe, the long-standing ideas of the

past have become fragile, whereas visionary or normative perspectives are rare to

find.

However, we should be careful about these all too monolithic judgements.

Amongst the myriad of events of 2011, the sudden political awakening of Spanish

‘people’ seems particularly remarkable, as it clearly lies crossways between the

fervent Arab uprisings (Anderson, 2011, 5-15) and the European disheartenment. On

the one hand, the economic crisis has turned Spain, a European Eldorado during the

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late 1990s and early 2000s, into one of the foremost ‘Sick men of Europe’ from 2008

onwards. With unemployment rates running at over 20 per cent, widespread apathy

towards politics and a heavily weakened Left, Spain indeed seems part of the

European malaise. On the other hand, an unusual politicization shatters Spain at

present. The spearheads of the generalised dissatisfaction with Spain’s status quo are

the so-called indignados (or ‘the indignant’), also known as 15M movement – for May

the 15th, a date that refers to Spain’s communal elections in May, when protests first

began. This movement has achieved sound public attention. The indignados have

chosen the cities’ public squares as key locations of their demonstrations. Both in this

and in the widespread use of social media, the Spanish protests openly resemble the

Arab uprisings. Spain’s political awakening exhibits, I venture, a sui generis fusion of

the disheartened European juncture and the fervent Arab juncture.

Holding up this assumption, I shed light on the intricacies of this sui generis

Spanish laboratory. The guiding thesis of my article is that the Spanish case is

interesting because the 15M movement interlaces the juncture of the crisis with that

of politicization through a populist strategy. My thesis is that the politicization caused

by the 15M movement and Spain’s crises are interlaced developments. Spain’s

political awakening and her serious crises are but two sides of the same coin. We will

see that the 15M movement gives new answers to the old issues posed by Spanish

politics or, better to say, by the ideology of the Transición. Second, the movement

seizes moments of the neo-liberal ideology and brings them to bear in its own

political articulation. Third, the indignados construct the ‘people’ as their political

subject and thereby renew old inheritances and open up novel horizons.

From a theoretical perspective, the Spanish case gives backing to an anti-

chronological analysis of politics. The tentative intuition of an ‘ironic historicism’

aims at apprehending history as a contradictory constellation that breaks out

unpredictably rather than as a linear series of events. An ‘ironic historicism’

highlights that the past can always be reactivated, that antagonistic narratives can be

intertwined in heterogeneous assemblages and that hegemonic discourses can be

subversively reoccupied. While the notion of an ‘ironic historicism’ runs through this

article as its intuitive impetus, the post-Marxism of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal

Mouffe serves as its systematic compass. Two of their concepts are central in this

article. First, and in line with the intuition of an ‘ironic historicism’, I assume that

society has no ontological fixation beyond history. Laclau explains: ‘There is not what

might be called a basic structural objectivity from which history “flows”; rather, the

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very structure is historical. Moreover, the being of objects is also historical in that it is

socially constructed and structured by systems of meaning’ (Laclau, 1990, 36).

Second, the notion of ideology plays a major role in this article. I define ideology as a

discursive formation that is both a particular position of power and an objective order

of society. This neither normative nor pejorative but descriptive concept of ideology

captures what Gramsci means with hegemony: a particular view is successful in doing

as if it was an objective truth. Ideology thus allows to conceive the creation of ideas in

terms of a struggle for hegemony. Without the fixation and closure of meaning by

ideology, social order would be impossible (Stavrakakis, 2000, 101).

The structure of this article is as follows: I first present the intuition of an ‘ironic

historicism’. Second, I undertake a cursory genealogical reading of Spain’s current

scenario and sketch out the two ideologies of post-francoist Spain (the Transición

and neo-liberalism) as well as the founding myth they have enforced, Spain’s belief to

become a modernised European nation. Third, in the main part of this article I focus

on the political awakening of the indignados. Aided by theoretical devices and

historical insights, I forward a broad interpretation of the protests and focus on their

demands, their form of political articulation and their construction of a political

subject, the ‘people’, that renews pleads for popular sovereignty. Fourth, in the

conclusion I reflect on the historicity and the potentials of the 15M movement. Before

going ahead, I should state that I am aware that my reading is a highly particular and,

to say more, partial one. Nonetheless, it might offer a fruitful alternative perspective

on the Spanish protests.

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II. Ironic Historicism

In ‘The Poverty of Historicism’ (1961), Karl R. Popper queries the belief of historicism

that the course of human history can be predicted by scientific or any other rational

methods. Popper claims that the faith in a predictable historical destiny, uphold

chiefly by historical materialism, is utterly misleading. One cannot but argue with

Popper that the future is (whatever it may bring about) impossible to predict.

However, I am sceptical whether Popper refuted his historicist rivals. In opposition to

Popper, I resolvedly take a historicist stance whose central aim no longer is to make

historical predictions, but to discover ‘the “rhythms” or the “patterns”, the “laws” or

the “trends” that underlie the evolution of history’ (Popper, 1961, 3). In opposition to

Popper’s interpretation, I uphold that these historical patterns do not refer back to an

a-historical telos that determines their direction. Quite the opposite, I conceive the

patterns of history as contingent results of power struggles (Benjamin, 1991, 691-

708). Such a historicist view not only focuses on the prevailing ideas, narratives and

belief systems, but also on those that were outwardly defeated. These defeated

positions stand for forgotten, failed or absorbed alternatives to the present state of

affairs.

An ‘ironic historicism’ does not think linearly. For we often fall into the trap of

seeing history as if it was a traditional military war. When old positions are defeated

and their territory occupied, the unrivalled predominance of novel positions deems

unquestionable. However, the overrun positions may survive behind or even amidst

the new front lines (Gramsci, 1971, 490). The metaphor of a trench warfare is

instructive to grasp the intuition of an ‘ironic historicism’.1 The trench warfare is

based on a winding system of ditches, where it is unclear where the frontline actually

lies. In a similar way, an ‘ironic historicism’ conceives history as a non-chronological

happening where seemingly bygone positions are awakened anew, where traces of

apparently long-forgotten claims run through current claims and where novel

narratives subversively reoccupy the claims of their sworn-enemies. In ‘The 18th

Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, Marx captures the spirit of an ‘ironic historicism’:

‘The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the

living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from

1 This notion is inspired by Oliver Marchart’s (2009, 6-9) description of Gramsci’s materialism as an ironic materialism.

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them names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language’(Marx, 2009, 9).

An ‘ironic historicism’ is ironic because it assumes that history is a contradictory

constellation that obliterates the line between the past and the present, between the

victorious and the defeated. In the spirit of this guiding intuition, traditions should be

regarded as inheritances that can be reactivated at present (Heidegger, 1979, 385).

We can update historical ideas, narratives or belief systems in making certain

traditions meaningful for us and convert them into lived experiences, uncovering the

enduring resonance of the past in the present and releasing departures to a future

that was not there before.

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III. Genealogical Readings: the Transición and Neo-Liberalism

Let us now go into a cursory genealogical reading of Spain’s current status quo with

these theoretical lenses. Maybe an ‘ironic historicism’ shed new light on the

fundaments of present-day Spain.

In their diagnostic interventions, Isidro López and Emmanuel Rodríguez (2010,

2011) suggest that Spain’s pathway to a Western modernity, long taken for granted in

political sciences (Zamora 2001, Tusell 2003), is interrupted today. All of a sudden,

the authors underscore, Spain’s new beginning as a proud European nation head-to-

head with Western Europe has turned to be a plain cul-de-sac. In due fact, Spain’s

long-standing belief of becoming a normalised and modern European nation has

itself been the founding myth since the end of the francoist regime in the late 1970s. A

founding myth is an encompassing break with the past and the inauguration of a new

time. The French or Russian revolutions inaugurated exemplary founding myths that

created a new order of history. Founding myths rest upon selective lectures of the

past: to set a novel historical scenery, they dismiss all those narratives which are

juxtaposed to theirs (Koschorke, 2007, 11). This dismissal of uncanny past traditions

ex negativo sutures the new and, as it were, virgin order.

In the case of Spain, the dismissed past of post-francoist Spain is her tradition

of conflict. The cleavages of Spain were more manifold and shattering than those of

other Western nations. Be it in the cleavages of capital vs. labour, centre vs. periphery

or traditionalists vs. progressives, the Spain of the 19th and 20th century was shaken

by antagonisms. These, as Ortega would have called them, ‘metaphysical’ conflicts used

to have disruptive potentials (Gunther et al., 2004, 4). In relation to labour conflicts,

Spain had a huge anarchist movement that transcended the class conflict and aimed to

free the ‘people’ (peasants and workers alike) from oppression, the same holds true for

nationalist claims or for the dichotomy of the ‘two Spains’, i.e. between local ‘Iberian’

traditions and European and more universal liberal ideals (Santos Juliá, 2004a). For

better or for worse, these conflicts long jeopardised any attempts to catch up with

Western Europe and gave the assertion ‘Spain is different’ its proper meaning. This was

the past Spain’s new beginning had by all evidence buried. But what about the

ideologies that enforced these new times?

The upfront death of Spain’s political exceptionalism was brought along by two

ideologies. On the political stage, it was the ideology of the Transición (transition). It

enforced the transition from francoist dictatorship to parliamentary democracy in the

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1970s and put Spain on the edge of the ‘Third Wave of Democratizations’. More on

the social and economic terrains, but nonetheless entangled with the Transición, the

neo-liberal ideology proved influential since the 1960s on.

Following the interpretation of Santos Juliá (2004b), the Transición was

sutured by the key signifier of political virtue. After nearly forty years of dictatorship,

Spain’s political exceptionalism was all but dead and buried. The anachronisms of

Francoism (1939–1975) had brought to light the worst face of Spain. This led both

reformists from within the regime and the democratic opposition from outside to

begin a ‘long conversation of national reconciliation’ (Santos Juliá 2004a) that put an

end to Spain’s uneven political landscape. A moral attitude of the elites was needed to

bury Spain’s bloody past and initiate a future in which Spaniards could live together

in peace and welfare. Political actors thus advanced a moral or, as it were, virtuous

conception of politics. For the political elites, politics was not a mere institutional

skeleton of society, but its vivid and pulsating reflection. According to José Luis L.

Aranguren, an intellectual that supported this view, the moral attitude should spread

through individual, social and political levels and thus take shape as ‘integral

expression’ of a wider moral spirit (Aranguiren, 1995a, 164). That is the reason why in

the years after Franco the novel democracy was judged legitimate in terms of the

virtuosity of its elites. Spain’s political system would only be as good as the virtue of

its new protagonists. From the nodal point of a political virtue we can flesh out other

key propositions of the Spanish Transición.

First, the ideology of the transition underlined the nonideological consensus of

political actors. As was already demanded in the student protests of Madrid in 1956,

Spain could only start anew if she put an end to past confrontations and committed to

a horizon of consensus. All political forces – from Catholics to communists – should

be legitimated to become a part of the new Spain as long as they compromised their

most radical ideological claims. Even the Communists (now gathered in Izquierda

Unida) were accepted as legitimate players of the young democracy in return for their

acceptance of King Juan Carlos I as head of the state. Second, Spain’s social stability

was to be maintained at all costs. Sustained by the most influential political forces

from the left to the right, the consensus was meant to overcome the perennial split of

the two Spains (traditional vs. progressive) and construct a political sphere in which

all forces could face each other as democratic opponents rather than as enemies. The

socialist party (PSOE) presented itself as a ‘viable’ alternative and thus renounced to

define itself as a Marxist party in 1979. The PSOE envisaged the political model of

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northern Europe rather than that of France or Italy: the democratization of the state

apparatus and the build-up of the welfare state were to be favoured, and a strong

course of political confrontation dismissed (Tuñón de Lara, 1989, 59-62). Third, the

Transición revolved around a course of economic liberalism that rested on a range of

reforms initiated by the francoist regime itself since 1959. The modernising reforms

opened Spain’s economy to the international market, privatised her key industries and

flexibilised the labour market. This new course went hand in hand with a novel

emphasis: Spain should steer the same path as other Western economies. The message

of economic liberalism was maintained in the Transición and upheld by rightists and

leftists. A liberalised economy was one of the central conditions of Spain’s membership

in the European Community (achieved in 1986) and thus no ‘responsible’ political

position put it into question.

To sum it up, the ideology of the Transición succeeded (catalysed by an

impressive economic growth) in breaking with Spain’s long-standing tradition of

conflict and settled the political discourse down around the key signifier of political

virtue and the moments of nonideological consensus, social stability and economic

liberalism. Two remarks are central here. Firstly, the transition to democracy was put

forth by political forces from left to right. The central political actors of today’s politics

sacrified their own ideological hallmarks to reinforce the hegemony of the Transición.

Secondly, the new course finally made Spain a European nation. For Aranguren, Spain

had become a European democracy by the mid-1980s: she had achieved a political

system comparable the rest of the West. Aranguren also added that on the societal level

the economic liberalisation had initiated wide-ranging changes. Neo-capitalism, as he

described it, had brought to life a new society: liberal, individualised and consumerist

(Aranguren, 1995b, 653-57). Aranguren bore testimony of the unfolding of the neo-

liberal ideology.

If we stick again to a discursive reading, we should conceive the moment of

autonomy as the key signifier suturing the neo-liberal ideology. The knowledge-based

economy, the breakdown of occupational hierarchies or the ‘unprecedented flexibility

of lifestyles’ (Azmanova, 2010, 390) are all moments revolving around the matrix of

autonomy. To capture the neo-liberal autonomy, we can go back to Marx’s idyllic

picture of communism. Communist society allows to fully realise individual and

collective autonomy (Marx, 2004, 53). The neo-liberal turnaround from the fordist

mass-factory-employee to the flexible and knowledgeable labour force of our times

holds tribute to Marx’s vision of a free subjectivity. I actually claim that the neo-

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liberal autonomy has been taken from the ideals of the New Left of the 1960s and

1970s. For neo-liberalism is, and here I bring to mind the popular wisdom that the

yuppie is the son of the hippie, a child of the New Left inasmuch as it has

institutionalised (think about networks, dynamic interactions or creativity skills)

concerns of the ‘artistic critic’ (Boltanski, Chiapello, 2005), more centred on individual

autonomy and self-fulfilment than on the old class struggle. Powerful as the New Left

was, and Spain is no exception here (Álvarez Junco, 1994, 311-13), its demands were

rearticulated by neo-liberalism: crucially but not only its plead for autonomy.

First, in post-fordist immaterial labour, the worker brings to bear her/his creative

potentials. The neo-liberal ideology has merged the differences between an alienated

work and joyous play (valuable in itself). Neo-liberalism has thus seemingly bowed

down to the situationists’ demand ‘Ne travaillez jamais’. Yet further inspection would

unveil the neo-liberal creativity as a compulsory technique of the self by which

subjects are brought to govern themselves in an all-embracing manner. The Leitbild of

this, as it were, neo-liberal anthropology is an old acquaintance: the homo

oeconomicus (Bröckling, 2002, 158). Second, neo-liberalism has done justice to the

New Left’s plead for cognitive labour. It has put forth an intellectual empowerment of

the workers. Conversely to the past, today’s work rests upon extensive knowledge. For

instance, in Spain’s labour market 40 per cent of the active population is employed in

intellectual or administrative fields (Gálvez Biesca, 2008a, 199-226). Neo-liberalism

has unleashed human potential, i.e. social skills, team work and collective

intelligence. Even if they are exploited for the ends of benefit rather than for those of

socialism, the neo-liberal ideology (partly) bolsters autonomous subjectivities (Rose,

2003, 141). Third, we can mention the flexibility of neo-liberalism. Both in qualified

and precarious labour, the employees are due to stick to flexible working hours,

network structures and accept without hesitation that work transgresses the

boundaries to their very Lebenswelt. However, is this flexibility not also to be regarded

as a sort of posterior acceptance of left-wing demands in the 1960s and 1970s? We

could interpret the deracinated neo-liberal workforce as a realisation of the leftist

theme of self-management (Boltanski, Chiapello, 2005, 197). For the New Left, the

self-management of workers was crucial to counter relations of subordination (or

even oppression) in labour.

Our genealogical readings allow the following conclusion: the ideologies of the

Transición and neo-liberalism have boosted Spain’s new-beginning as a normalised

and modern European nation after Franco’s death. Having said that, this development

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did not anticipate the possibility of a crisis (of either political, economic or social

shape). In this sense, the normalised, modern and European Spain has not been

prepared for the crisis that has been taken place since 2008 onwards. Even if not a

matter of discussion of the present article, I assume that this crisis has shattered post-

francoist Spain in its very fundaments. To one particular perception of this crisis we

shall now turn our attention.

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IV. The Movement of Indignación

a) A Threefold Crisis?

For a start, we can quote the manifesto of ‘Real Democracy Now’, a platform that has

played a key role for the articulation of the 15M movement and is largely

representative for its demands:

‘Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic, and social outlook which we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice’ (Real Democracy Now, 2011)

What is, at first glance, striking about the above lines? It is the outward

indignation that is expressed in them. The ‘outrage’, ‘consternation’ or ‘helplessness’

they bring to the fore.

What may have caused them? An economic breakdown? Is it not all too natural

to be hopeless with unemployment rates running at over 20 per cent and at 45 per

cent among youth – figures unbeaten in the European Union (Instituto Nacional de

Estadística 2011, Eurostat 2011)? Crossways to her high educational levels (Ministerio

de educación, 2011), Spain’s economy also rests on undue rates of precarious and

temporal employment. Not to mention that international arm-twisting has forced

Spanish government to adopt economic reforms that pave the way for more labour

market flexibility (Boletín oficial del estado, 2011), loan cuts of public employees or a

reform of the constitution so as to limit the Spanish household deficit. Does the

manifesto not just betray an evident economic crisis?

Yet the quotation also discloses a political crisis. For the indignados, politicians

are – bankers and businessmen alike – suspicious of being corrupt. What could lie

beyond this anger with representative democracy? During the last decades,

parliamentary democracy has been determined by an oscillation movement of

polarization and consensus (Bernecker, 2008, 87-9). The two main parties of Spanish

politics, conservatives (PP) and socialists (PSOE) have instituted a bizarre logic. In

respect to some political fields, they steer a path of polarization that underlines their

contraposed conservative or socialist treats. Aznar’s conservative cabinet between 1996

and 2004 privatised economic sectors or backed (notwithstanding demonstrations

against it) the US invasion of Iraq. On the contrary, the socialist government of

Zapatero (2004–2011) has followed a progressive political course. Socialists have

legalised same sex marriages, forced the discussion about the Spanish Civil War and

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made efforts for positive gender discrimination. It goes without saying that

conservatives were (and are) at odds with these policies. Behind the scenes of this

polarization in some fields, socialists and conservatives hold consensus around those

policies where ‘the structure of society is at stake’ (Balakrishnan, 2005, 15). The PP and

PSOE have left core macro-economic policies inherited from Francoism untouched

(López, Rodríguez, 2010), closed their eyes in front of the challenges brought about by

the wave of migration of the last decade and have not solved Spain’s multinational

grievances (Cazorla Rodríguez, 2006). Spanish politics has, the indignados claim,

developed into an autonomous sphere with its own agreements or, to put it in other

terms, with its own codes and logics. This automatization of the political sphere has led

to an encompassing estrangement and apathy towards politics (Vallespín, 2008, 292).

Hence, is a political crisis out of question (Navarro, 2011)?

Further, the quotation unveils a third aspect that is especially remarkable. In

principle, vis-à-vis the crisis of economy and politics, forces of critique should

articulate the accumulated discontent. Despite this, in the quoted passage of the

manifesto, the indignados claim to be ‘helpless’ and ‘without a voice’. Where are the

forces of critique that could counter the current malaise?

One possible actor of critique, the Spanish Left, is victim of a twofold juncture.

First, the Old Left is tied to the ideology of the Transición. As shown, the Transición

was supported by leftist forces. To build up a new Spain, socialists and communists –

together with the two main unions, UGT and CCOO – renounced to their most

progressive hallmarks. The socialists gave up their Marxist orientation, the

communists retreated from demanding radical economic reforms and even accepted

the kingship of Juan Carlos I. They so became pivots of post-francoist politics.

Nevertheless, this was, if we recall the frame of the Transición, a mixed blessing. In

becoming clues of the political order after Franco, the Old Left threw the baby out with

the bath water. It bounded its prospects to that of the Transición, thus putting down

the spearhead of critique. Second, the New Left had no better luck. Its positions, no

longer revolving around issues of class but of identity, have been absorbed and

rearticulated by the neo-liberal ideology. The latter has seized the moments of

autonomy, creativity, etc. of its emancipatory origins and rearticulated them for its

proper ends, i.e. productivity and consumption. As backwash of this neo-liberal

absorption, the New Left has lost the strength it once held. As in the rest of the West,

radical struggles are no longer proliferating – conversely to the 1970s or even 1980s

(Laclau, Mouffe, 2001, 131). The demands of the New Left may resonate in our current

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condition, but its political project has by and large capsized. Spain’s new social

movements have become ‘progressively weak, depoliticized, and focused on partial

objectives’ (Álvarez Junco, 1994, 321).

The bondage of the Old Left to the Transición and the absorption of the New

Left by neo-liberalism mean that at present there are no counter ideologies that could

articulate Spain’s present-day state of affairs. This is the overture drama of the

Spanish Left. In Spain, spaces of political articulation have shrunken and the

diversity of struggles has diminished. While on the scene of official politics the

possible forms of articulation are narrowed by the ideology of the Transición, a

hegemonic neo-liberalism has disarmed the more unorthodox, floating and diverse

struggles of the New Left. As one of their slogans attests, ‘Nobody expects the

#Spanish Revolution’, the stance of the indignados seems uneasy in front of this

scenario. For the movement of indignación apparently faces a threefold crisis of

economy, politics and of the forces of critique. The adjoining figure summarises the

genealogical interpretations of the last chapter and illustrates the current crises

(Figure 1).

New Left

Old Left

Dismissal of Grammar of Conflict

Unideological

Consensus Social Stability

Economic Liberalism

Creativity

Intellectual

Empowerment

Flexibility

Founding Myth of Post-Francoist

Spain: ‚New-Beginning as Normalised and Modern

European Nation’

Economic Crisis?

Neo-Liberalism Key Signifier: ‚Autonomy’

Crisis of Critique?

Transición Key Signifier:

‚Virtue’

Figure 1: Illustration of Spain’s Present State of Affairs and the Threefold Crisis

Political Crisis?

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b) The Outbreak of Indignación

Since 15 May 2011 onwards, a wave of politicisation has overcome Spain. Its original

cause, the discontent against the Spanish voting system which favours big parties and

harms small ones, has been only the opening of an incipient movement that tackles a

broad spectrum of issues: economic, political and social. Let us clarify from the

beginning that those who downplay the 15M movement as volatile outburst of the

‘Facebook generation’ or reduce it to a necessary (and hence mechanical) expression

of ‘objective’ economic or socio-political contradictions miss the point. In the present

article, I put forth another reading. The indignados have initiated a new political

process that stands on its own. Its roots, impulses and contradictions (not to mention

its outcomes) cannot be reduced to a mere expression of other, objective causes. The

only explanans of the indignation is the indignation itself.

If we consider the manifesto of ‘Real Democracy Now’, the broadness of its

demands is staggering. Calling Spain’s difficult status quo to mind, the manifesto

underscores: ‘This situation [of crisis] has become normal, a daily suffering, without

hope. But if we join forces, we can change it. It’s time to build a better society

together’ (Democracia Real Ya, 2011). What is striking about the quotation are the

hegemonic goals it brings to the fore. Hegemonic insofar as it questions the whole

organisation of society – not only of some societal spheres. However, there are targets

that stand out of this claim for broad social renewal. First, the political sphere is

challenged. The bipartidism headed by the ‘immovable acronym PP & PSOE’ does –

apparently – not represent the people’s voice. For official politics has allied, argue the

indignados, with a bleak ‘dictatorship of major economic powers’. The latter are the

other target of protests. As two slogans of the 15M movement claim: ‘We want a

democracy, not a marketocracy’, ‘We have not voted for the IMF’. The quotations

unveil that along with the indignation against Spain’s economic and political outlook,

protesters plead for democracy, which is constructed as being opposed to capitalism

and market forces. To quote the manifesto: ‘Democracy belongs to the ‘people’

(demos = ‘people’, krátos = government) which means that government is made for

every one of us’ (Democracia Real Ya, 2011). The two nodal points of the indignados’

protests appear to be ‘Indignation’ and ‘Real Democracy’.

The expression of ‘Indignation’ and the claim for ‘Real Democracy’ have been

suspiciously appraised. According to mainstream media, the indignados’ demands

are, at best, understandable, but unrealistic and naive. Theirs is a generational

16

outburst that will soon settle down. At worst, the spectre of fascism is suspected

beyond the 15M movement. For instance, Sáez Mateu, a liberal intellectual, claims

that the movement has only delivered a demagogic counterblast to Spain’s ‘agonizing

situation’. For him, the indignados are an uncontrollable ‘postmodern crowd’, a wild

‘sum of micro-anarchisms and solitudes’ (Sáez Mateu, 2011). In fact, be it that the

indignados impede journalistic reports about them, personally offend politicians and

businessmen, fail to leave the public squares they have occupied or denounce the

wastage of public expenditure (e.g. for too many official limousines), one accusation

is exhibited time and again: the 15M movement follows the dangerous track of

populism.

17

c) Reoccupations, Seizures and the Construction of El Pueblo

In what follows, I take the description of the 15M movement as populist on faith. Yet

its populism is, I hold, neither a sublimated expression of a pathological status quo

nor a proto-fascist cul-de-sac (Žižek, 2006, 551-74). Their populism is a mode of

political practice (Laclau, 2004, Jansen 2011, 75-96). As such, it holds keen

potentials, for under its uncanny appearance reside chances of re-politicization and

re-democratization. What is more, along with the ‘populist nature’ of the 15M

movement, bygone pleads for popular sovereignty are eager to resurface. They do this

in way that is sui generis and not indebted to either the Old or the New Left. The

guiding idea of my analysis is that the populism of the indignados allows them to

move past the disarment of the Left in Spain, query the hegemonic ideologies of

Transición and neo-liberalism and construct a political subject El Pueblo (the

‘people’) with keen potentials. This guiding hypothesis allows to understand why and

how the indignados come to demand the impossible: the finalization of a cycle and

the ‘reactivation’ of a new one, revolving around a novel ideological framework.

I develop this guiding intuition in four, closely intertwined steps. Since each of

these four steps in turn attests the four hallmarks that characterize the populism of

the 15M movement, I briefly outline them beforehand. (1) The populist nature of the

15M movement is underpinned, first, in the broadness of its demands. The

expression of ‘Indignation’ and the claim for ‘Real Democracy’ function as the nodal

points of demands running through all realms of the social, not least the political and

economic ones. However, and this is of even greater interest, the contents of the

demands challenge one influential ideology in particular, that of the Transición. (2)

Second, the political articulation of the 15M movement is ubiquitous. It moves across

various forms of protest, discovers new (and inherited) spaces of protest and builds a

cornucopia of political alliances, not narrowed by any a priori frames. In this political

articulation, we shall see how the indignados renew claims of the New Left and

subversively seize the hallmarks of the neo-liberal ideology. (3) Third, the 15M

movement constructs the ‘people’ as its political subject. Whereas many identify the

critique with the young generation –which may be correct from a sociological

perspective – the 15M movement claims to represent a broad and heterogeneous

‘people’, neither defined by age, class nor ideology. In the construction of a ‘people’,

the indignados divide Spain’s political space in two antagonistic parts and thus

counterbalance the virtuous ‘people’ to perfidious politicians and businessmen. (4)

18

Fourth, the 15M movement seemingly has no traditions resp. common histories on

which to draw. This aspect, which is going to be highlighted in the conclusion, is of

importance because it, first of all, allows the indignados to be a surface for other

political inscriptions. On this juncture, we shall appraise that Spain’s dismissed

grammar of conflict is awakened. Under the ahistorical surface of this ‘postmodern

crowd’, another historicity arises: more tenuous and less linear, but maybe also with a

broader horizon of expectation. Before moving on, it only remains to be said that this

analysis is as much a practical elucidation as it is an exercise in social theory – and

hopefully intertwines both in a fruitful manner.

19

(1) Demands and the Reoccupation of the Transición

If one observes the concatenation of Spain’s protests (Wikipedia, 2011a), what is

most striking about them is their broadness. In a highly sanguine manner, protesters

put into question the whole range of fundamental rules and institutions of post-

francoist Spain, leaving no former truism untouched. The indignados break with the

validity of the Transición across the board. The way in which the indignados

overcome the frame of the Transición is best described with the concept of

‘reoccupation’, coined by Hans Blumenberg (1988).2 Reoccupation means that an old

position defines a set of issues that a new position then takes up. Nonetheless, the

new position reoccupies the field of the old one only in regard to its issues, not its

answers, which are eradicated. A discursive moment is hence disarticulated from one

context and rearticulated in another (Hildebrand, 2009). Let us trace how the

indignados reoccupy the terrain of the Transición.

To begin with, I focus on the key signifier ‘virtue’. We saw that the transition

from dictatorship to democracy was only achieved thanks to a politics impregnated

by morality. The 15M movement now takes up the plead for ‘virtue’ and utilises it as a

normative lens from where it judges over the state of current politics. Be it in the way

political corruption is denounced, the bipartidism of socialists and conservatives

queried or the government’s response to the economic challenges regarded as

illegitimate, the failing virtue of today’s politics is conveyed time after time. That is

why the assembly of Puerta del Sol in 22 May 2011 demanded that bank accounts and

financial affairs of parties should be transparent, so as to impede corruption (Madrid,

toma la Plaza, 2011). This insightful example discloses that the indignados do more

than merely renewing the old claims of the Transición against today’s state of affairs.

The claim for financial transparency implicitly claims that the ‘people’ are due to

survey political righteousness. Whether a political system is virtuous or not, the

indignados argue, cannot be judged within the system itself; it must also be ‘checked’

by the ‘people’. The original meaning of virtue in the Transición is hence enlarged.

The old problem that the Transición’s virtue aimed to solve, ‘What is good politics?’,

is posed in changeless terms, but the answer differs. It no longer is political virtue

alone, it now is virtue of politics combined with popular virtue or, in other words,

under popular auspices. Whereas for the Transición virtue denoted a good liberal-

2 Blumenberg describes how the modern idea of progress is indebted to the eschatological idea of redemption. In his view, the notion of progress gives another – immanent rather than transcendent – answer to the same question already posed by Christianty, namely the absolution of mankind. Blumenberg so speaks about a process of secularization through eschatology.

20

democratic government, it now has become an attribute of the bon sense of the

‘people’ – and thus revitalises a particular historical narrative (p. 23).

The same process of reoccupation holds true, mutatis mutandis, for the other

claims originally made by the Transición. First, I focus on the aspect of

nonideological consensus. As became clear, the moment of nonideological consensus

was the ethical spirit required to give a new impulse to the country. For the

indignados, the pendular movement of consensus and conflict reveals the

malfunction of this moment and the illness of a ‘partitochracy’ in which cosmetic

alternances rather than real alternatives are the order of the day. Conversely, the 15M

movement claims to be a nonideological movement that transcends barriers of

ideology, generation or class. For instance, the platform ‘Real Democracy Now’ claims

to be neither committed to a particular party nor union, but to a broad ‘regeneration

of democracy’ (Wikipedia, 2011b). The spirit the indignados call for is quite similar to

that of the Transición. Here as there, a broad and united front is invoked to overcome

the current situation. Although the problem as such, ‘How to face the challenges of

the present?’, is the same, the answer has moved again: while the actor of the

consensus in the Transición was the political elite, the protagonists of Spain’s

nowadays nonideological regeneration are ‘people’ themselves.

Subsequently, I touch on the issue of social stability. Protesters all around Spain

have demanded social rights such as public welfare, the right for dignified housing or

healthcare and have increasingly cast attention on the issue of house clearances.

Growing numbers of people in economic difficulties are not able to pay back their

mortgages and are thus thrown out of their homes because of eviction orders (Blog

Análisis, 2011). This problem dislodges that the original claims made by the

Transición for social stability – recall the commitment of the socialists to a

Scandinavian-like welfare-state – are shattered at present. While the indignados

denounce that the government does nothing to ameliorate or calm down this tense

economic situation beyond sticking to the dictums of financial actors, the protesters

themselves reoccupy the issue of social stability. They plead for a real institution of

social rights (housing, welfare, healthcare, public education, etc.). The Transición’s

question, ‘How to institute a stable social order?’, remains untouched, but the answer

mutates: social stability is no longer a goal that only serves the stability of politics (as

in the Transición), but is envisaged to secure the needs of all Spaniards.

What happens with the pledge of the Transición to a liberal economic order?

Without centring on the controversial issue if the 15M movement is anti-capitalist,

21

the need to repoliticise economy is conveyed by the whole movement. The

indignados question ‘senseless’ measures where the needs of Spaniards are one out of

many variables: hence the defiance of ‘opaque’ financial markets, the distrust of the

banking system, the opposition to the ‘iron laws’ imposed by international organisms

or the disagreement with the liberalisation of the labour market by the current

cabinet. Against the abstract economy, only designed to ‘enrich a minority’

(Democracia Real Ya, 2011), protesters infuse economy with a political meaning. The

indignados do not only question the liberal economic frame, the debate about

economy. In their view, if economy should have social democratic or Marxist

contours is a political question. While for the Transición the economy is to serve

modernization, for the indignados it should serve Spaniards.

Summarizing, the 15M movement takes up the issues of the Transición and

answers differently: political virtue mutates to popular virtue, nonideological

consensus to democratic regeneration, social stability to social rights for all, and a

liberal economy to an economy commanded by the ‘people’. The ideology of the

Transición is hence subversively undermined – its issues are taken up and its

answers thrown overboard. Rather than inventing a new political language, the

indignados restate the old and tie it to their novel programme.

Readers may have wondered why I have spoken about the Transición so far as if

it was well and alive, leaving out of consideration that this ideology is more than 30

years old. Certainly, the key concepts of the Transición demarcate the legitimate

arena of post-francoist politics. Hand in hand with its success, the Transición has

undergone a process of sedimentation where its moment of institution has been

concealed. In the 1970s, the vivid memory of a conflictive past was the backlash

against which Spain’s new-beginning took place. In these times, the establishment of

the Transición was a political decision that could have carried out otherwise. This

contingent situation sank into oblivion and the Transición became Spain’s political

discourse per se and, so to say, its natural destiny. The sedimentation of Transición

brought to life an array of political institutions. With William H. Sewell Jr. (2006, 68-

72), I define an institution as a ‘built environment’. Built environments develop a life

on their own: they achieve a certain autonomy from the ideological ethos that, and

this is important, unchangedly provides it with legitimacy (Giddens, 1984, 289-310).

The Transición is the ideology which provides Spain’s political system with

legitimacy, but the latter also is an institution in its own right. The peculiar

development of Spain’s political system is an autonomous process that cannot be

22

traced back to the propositions of the Transición. Spanish politics takes its legitimacy

from the Transición while it steers an own pathway.

From this perspective, the effects of the potential dismemberment of the

Transición get clear. In its reoccupation of the Transición, the 15M movement

overcomes the ideological overlay of Spanish politics. For the protesters, politics has

become a field of struggle for governmental power, corruption, bipartidism, etc.

Notwithstanding the populist gesture in these descriptions, as when all politicians are

accused of being corrupt or of being servants of capital, protesters expose the normal

functioning of politics: Is the latter not the place of overt struggles (and of silent

agreements) avant la lettre? Whereas Spanish politics covers its ‘rough ground’ of

disagreements, struggles and divisions with the Transición, after the latter’s potential

dismantling this is no longer feasible to the same extent as it was before. The only –

but decisive – aspect that has changed is that the veil of ideology has fallen and day-

to-day politics is laid bare.

23

(2) Articulations and the Challenge of Neo-Liberalism

We can now focus on the articulation of the 15M movement. The guiding

questions here are: How does the movement articulate its demands? What are

motives, forms and alliances of the indignados? With this new focus of attention, I

switch to the other ideology that has occupied this article, neo-liberalism. Following

the intuition provided by an ‘ironic historicism’, evidence will be provided for the

thesis that the indignados ironically seize the neo-liberal ideology.

Recall what was said above concerning neo-liberalism. The neo-liberal idea of

autonomy did not arise out of an empty space, but was taken off the plead of the New

Left for collective autonomy. Neo-liberalism has seized the New Left’s ideal of

autonomy, restated its meaning in an individualised manner and bounded it to the

ideal of the homo economicus. One could sum up the neo-liberal strategy with the

following assertion: ‘Do what you want, but be productive!’ Having said this, we

should be careful about choosing the exit strategy too soon: the neo-liberal

appropriation of the spirit of the New left has not been monolithic. For the demands of

1968 sedimented to a political culture inasmuch as they became the normative horizon

from which we today formulate political demands.

The notion of a political culture needs elucidation. It echoes Almond’s and

Verba’s concept of civic culture (Almond, Verba, 1963). Civic culture is in-between

the narrow sphere of the political system and the broad sphere of society and

functions as normative foundation of both. Keith M. Baker has reconceived this idea

in more political terms and defined a political culture as the whole set of discourses

and symbolic practices by which political claims are made (Baker, 1990, 4-11). In his

view, a political culture is the broad ground on which individuals and groups

‘articulate, negotiate, implement, and enforce the competing claims they make upon

one another’ (Baker, 1990, 4). Conversely to civic culture, political culture does not

function as normative pacification of the social, but as the condition of its relentless

and ever-contested struggles.

My argument is that the New Left eventually succeeded. It is on the shoulders of

its victory that we demand gender equality, the mitigation of race grievances or

indeed more autonomy in our job. The eventual victory of 1968 helps to understand

the double-edged character of the neo-liberal unfolding. With this subversive

strategy, the neo-liberal ideology backed its legitimacy and during the last couple of

decades went into the offensive throughout, not the least in Spain (Observatorio

24

metropolitano, 2011). But neo-liberalism has been only one form of articulating the

aforementioned moments. Following Rose, in principle nothing impedes to enforce the

notions of autonomy, creativity, etc. in the realm of other ideologies – all the more if we

ascertain the origins of these notions (Rose, 1998, 164). In short, the story of the New

Left is not told with the success of neo-liberalism. If the intuition of an ‘ironic

historicism’ holds true in one way – that is, in the neo-liberal appropriation of a range

of demands of the New Left – why should it not also hold true in the other? More often

than not, history, a fierce goddess of disorder alike, breaks out unpredictably

(Schlögel, 2011, 583-95).

What is now the position of the indignados against this neo-liberal restatement

of the idea of autonomy? The protesters cast doubt on the neo-liberal autonomy in

their very political articulation. As prominent example, when the indignados camped

on Madrid’s Puerta del Sol during four weeks (from 17 May to 12 June 2011), they

enthusiastically followed axioms of direct democracy. They took their decisions in

assemblies and organised themselves in commissions. For the protesters, the first

step to change the ‘system’ is to change the way in which people interact and enact

political decisions. This motivation is, I claim, indebted to a collective notion of

autonomy and stimulated by May 1968 (Wikipedia, 2011c). For the indignados renew

the New Left’s plead for a autonomy that is not satisfied with a purely individual

liberty, but also demands collective possibilities to act. As did the New Left in the

1960s and 1970s, the indignados hold that only with power over structures there is

autonomy to act.

In addition to the plead for a collective autonomy, the indignados also go back

to the ideas of creativity, intellectual empowerment and flexibility and articulate

them in the context of their project.

First, the creativity of the movement of indignación resides in the form of its

protests, i.e. in the way it articulates its demands. Similarly to the neo-liberal

creativity underscoring the moments of play and pleasure to unleash human

potentials, the indignados have created commissions in major Spanish cities that

operate in an open manner (without fixed spokesmen and with open-source software)

(Blog Vigo 2011). That way, the subject’s capacity to act, bring potentials to bear and

share knowledge are taken centre stage. Second, let me focus on the intellectual

empowerment that points to constitution and power of human agency. For human

agency is bound to certain subject positions and spaces of interaction (Foucault,

2005, 55-61). As does neo-liberalism, the indignados construct loose subject

25

positions and broad spaces of interactions. They have chosen public squares and

social media as central locations of its protests. These locations are undefined. In

opposition to factories or universities, a plaza mayor or of a Facebook chat are

(almost) open spaces. All can take part in them as far as they are indignant and

demand democracy. The ‘people’ can occupy these locations at free will and, crucially,

shape them. As a result of this political action, public spaces of opposition and

rebellious subjectivities emerge (Querrien, 2009, 212-17; 2005, 75-86).

Third, the 15M movement restates the ideal of flexibility: the identity and the

boundaries of the protesters’ project are hold in a floating state in order to ally with

other political projects. On the hand, the indignados have since June 2011 spread out

into the barrios (neighbourhoods) of major Spanish cities and have there won the

support of neighbourhood associations. On the other, the 15M movement has

bolstered its international orientation. One can acknowledge a process of reciprocal

reinforcement here. Be it in Tunisia, the US or Germany a movement unified around

the moments of ‘Indignation’ and ‘Real Democracy’ is emerging (as became clear on

the worldwide protests that took place on 15th October 2011). This alliance between

national and international projects attests the potentials of the 15M movement.

Notwithstanding its genuinely Spanish background, its forceful ‘populist’ impetus

may prove fruitful for the similar protest movements.

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(3) The Construction of El Pueblo (and the Revision of the Crisis)

Before moving on, let me summarise my analysis so far. This review makes the

twofold strategy of the indignados understandable and discloses its full-fledged

potential.

First, my theoretical starting point assumes that the social has no a priori

ordering. Even if a social order seems solid and far from contestable, no ontological

ground safeguards its state of being. This assumption entails an awareness of

contingency and of the political as the hegemonic moment that aims at a partial (and

in the last instance always unsuccessful) grounding of the social order (Marchart,

2007). Our analysis is informed by this sensitivity: neither is an ideology immovable,

the articulation of social movements a zero hour nor is a crisis a ‘natural’ event.

The analysis of the 15M movement is to be seen from this starting point. Is it

really a ‘natural’ outbreak that is caused by objective crises of politics or economy? At

least so claim the indignados: the political and economic malaise has allegedly

triggered their discontent. However, this article was centered on the politicization itself

and left the crises largely aside. Readers should only bear in mind that worse economic

situations and worse political systems than that of Spain have not paved the way for

political mobilizations. In my view, to acknowledge a crisis as crisis is the result of a

political interpretation. For the indignados, this interpretation is the means of an

evident end: to articulate their alternative.

Let me recall the steps of the indignados’ political articulation. A practice of

articulation consists in the construction of nodal points that fix meaning (Laclau,

Mouffe, 2001, 113). As for the indignados, the nodal points of their protests are

‘Indignation’ and ‘Real Democracy’. The expression of the first and the plead for the

second demarcate a broad terrain of struggle. The concrete demands of the 15M

movement are clear-cut and reoccupy moments of the Transición, ascribing them to

the ‘people’. The table sums up the discussion.

Transición 15M Movement

Virtue of Politicians Virtue of Politicians controlled by Virtue of the ‘People’

Nonideological Consensus Nonideological Regeneration of Democracy

Social Stability Social Stability through Social Rights for the ‘People’

Liberal Economic Order Economic Order Commanded by the ‘People’

27

The way the neo-liberal ideology is challenged is no less subversive. The

indignados take over its claims and then make use of them in their political

articulation. They reoccupy the individual autonomy of neo-liberalism with a notion of

‘collective autonomy’ inherited from the New Left and seize a range of other neo-liberal

mantras. The indignados integrate the latter in their own political articulation, but let

untouched the inner logic of these neo-liberal moments. Another table illustrates this

strategy.

Our discussion of the challenge of the Transición as well as of neo-liberalism

has invariably disclosed a twofold strategy of the indignados. On the one hand,

protesters cast doubt on the status quo and underline that ‘things could be different’,

that is, are principally contingent. Neither is virtue solely a possession of politicians

nor individual autonomy a matter of individual self-fulfilment alone. On the other

hand, the indignados rearticulate the two hegemonic ideologies of contemporary

Spain in order to flesh out their alternative. This is the hegemonic side of their

articulation. In what follows, the construction of a ‘people’ as a political subject will

be targeted. This political strategy is to be seen as a continuation of the hegemonic

side of the strategy of the indignados. It finishes off their aim to present an

alternative with broad ambitions to the nowadays ‘critical’ state of affairs.

How do the indignados then build up their alternative? How do they construct a

political subject to, as it were, ‘change things’? To begin on concrete grounds, we can

look at the propositions of the assembly in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol – incidentally, the

assembly that spearheaded the 15M movement in its beginnings – on May 20, 2011.

It is possible to group the 16 propositions in three groups: those that fight corruption

and bolster political virtue, those that plead for democratic reforms of the political

system and those that demand a political control over economic entities (Madrid,

toma la plaza, 2011). The interesting point of these demands is their clear-cut

populist nature. Politics and economy are regarded as part of ‘the problem’. The

Neo-Liberal Ideology 15M Movement

Individual Autonomy Collective Autonomy (shown in: Political Practice)

Creativity Creativity in Form of the Protests (shown in: Knowledgeable Commissions)

Intellectual Empowerment Intellectual Empowerment in Constitution and Power of Agency (shown in: broad subject positions and spaces of interaction)

Flexibility Flexible Contours of the Political Project (shown in: variety of political alliances)

28

economic and the political crisis are intertwined and seemingly go hand in hand. A

commentator sympathetic towards the indignados underscores that they have

attacked the centre of the system, namely political and economic power (Díaz-

Salazar, 2011, 15-9). The interesting aspect in the talk about the ‘system’ is, of course,

not so much the insights it allows, but the strategy it unveils: the conscious

entanglement of a political and an economic crisis. This strategy is, I argue,

paradigmatic for the 15M movement as a whole. Its critique throws economic and

political problems together. Economic affairs further harm the state of Spain’s

democracy; inept politicians further spoil her economic prospects. This equivalence

between the political and the economic is crucial. With it, the indignados split the

social into two opposed spaces, one is corrupt, the other is pure (Laclau 2004, 93).

Two slogans illustrate this struggle: ‘Ricos los políticos y los banqueros? No con mi

dinero’ (‘Rich politicians and bankers? Not with my money’), El pueblo unido jamás

será vencido! (‘The unified ‘people’ will never be defeated!’)

Conversely to the corrupt space of politics and economy, the untouched space of

the unified and ‘awakened’ ‘people’ stands out. ‘El pueblo’ (the ‘people’) symbolises a

space that is pure and noble. Whereas concerning politics and economy the 15M

movement forwards an operation of distortion (Laclau 2006, 646-80) where

politicians, businessmen and bankers are highlighted as enemies that hold power

unjustly, on the other side of the barricade the movement claims but to ‘express’ the

true will of the ‘people’. This expression is all the more pure because, as the protesters

affirm, it expresses the collective will of the ‘people’ not via the corrupt parliamentary

arena, but directly on the street, where the common will of all Spaniards can be

disclosed. To substantiate this, the 15M movement time and again goes back to pools

that show that the great majority of Spanish ‘people’ stand beyond its claims (15M

News, 2011a). In fact, what the indignados here follow is a populist strategy, pure and

simple. They invoke a quasi-messianic ‘people’, whose collective they claim to express

without distortion. A ‘people’ that is oppressed by corrupt politicians and

businessmen, but that also seems to have facets that point to its virtuosity and

sovereignty. Sovereign in the sense that the ‘people’ is the only political subject which

can, the indignados say, bring about a turnaround and surpass the given state of

affairs. For who could dare to stand against a political option that relies on the

collective will of Spanish ‘people’?

As can be deciphered, the ‘people’ as political subject is present from the

beginning on in the discourse of the indignados. The ‘people’ are what gives a meaning

29

to – and holds together – the two nodal points of ‘Indignation’ and ‘Real Democracy’,

‘people’ are the (whether implicit or not) actor beyond the concrete demands and the

horizon of the political articulation of the 15M movement. In a certain way, when in

current protests old libertarian songs (‘A las barricadas!’) are sung or debates of

‘people’ for ‘people’ are held (15M News, 2011b), it seems as if, to paraphrase Anderson,

something that was always known deep-down is ‘rediscovered’ (Anderson, 1991, 196).

At present, when traditional political subjects (the working class or those of the New

Left) fade away and ‘postmodern’ ones (the multitude or the precariat) are more

popular in academia than in politics, one wonders about the potentials of the ‘people’.

Why precisely this political subject, seemingly more a matter of the 19th and early 20th

centuries than of our days?

To tell the truth, the political subject of the ‘people’ is as much a matter of the

present as it was from the past, for under the pressure of political contestation, long-

forgotten notions are awakened anew. Just recall the bonnet rouge (liberty cap). Its

ancient meaning, alluding to the ritual of the manumission of slaves, was reactivated

by the French revolution and became a constitutive element of its imaginary horizon

(Vives, 1971, 566). In this spirit, we can, with the notion of an ‘ironic historicism’ in

mind, trace the historical roots of ‘people’ constructed by the indignados. In a

twofold sense, its roots reside in the ‘Age of Revolution’ (1789–1848) (Hobsbawm,

1996a). First, the political subject behind the bourgeois revolutions of Western

Europe was the ‘people’. Articulated around the struggles for the nation and,

crucially, popular sovereignty, the ‘people’ passed over other grievances and fought

for a novel liberal order, liberated from feudal tyranny. They hence created a new

type of community that realised the demand of popular sovereignty. The second

meaning of the ‘people’ in this period has a more Spanish connotation. Against the

Napoleonic occupation of Spain, el Pueblo (as is vindicated to say here) revolted by its

own force – without aid of neither the flown king nor the ‘enlightened’ upper classes.

And it succeeded: the people’s guerrillas fought the oppressing French army back.

The following quotation of Hobsbawm hits the nail on the head more than it knows:

‘The French Revolution and the doings of Napoleon opened the eyes of the world. The Nations knew nothing before, and the ‘people’ thought that kings were gods upon the earth and that they were bound to say that whatever they did was well done. Through this present change it is more difficult to rule the ‘people’ (Hobsbawm, 1996a, 117).

30

Historically, the ‘people’ stand for the demand of popular sovereignty and for

the experience of oppression. Another facet of the political subject of the ‘people’

constructed by the 15M movement also has a historical and actual meaning. It is that

of virtue or, more precisely, of a virtue expressed against a background of oppression.

The idea of a ‘virtuous people’ classically referred to the broad group of those that

were unjustly discriminated in the distribution of social wealth and whose rights were

not recognised (Álvarez Junco, 1976, 377-99). Revolting against this oppression,

virtue was needed. The ‘people’ were an innocent political subject, willing to

messianically sacrifice itself for the community as a whole (Álvarez Junco, 1990, 157-

68). This historical meaning of popular virtue corresponds with the actual

connotations the indignados give them in their protests – call to mind their demand

that political virtue has to stand under the auspices of a virtuous ‘people’.

This correspondence between historical and actual meaning is highly

interesting, since it shows how the key signifiers of the Transición (virtue) and neo-

liberalism (autonomy) are used to build up the political subject of the ‘people’.

Moreover, these key signifiers are linked to features of the 19th and early 20th

century, for instance popular sovereignty or oppression. Taken together, these

features serve to articulate the ‘people’ as a political subject. The historical roots of

the ‘people’ so prove fruitful for the political project of the 15M movement at present.

In building up a political subject that is sovereign, oppressed and virtuous, the

‘people’ of the indignados is the central anchorage point of their political project. This

is ‘hegemonic’ side of the strategy of the 15M movement. In constructing the ‘people’ as

its political subject, the 15M movement gains shape as an ideology in status nascens.

Why in status nascens? Because its up-to-date nodal points ‘Indignation’ and ‘Real

Democracy’ only function as transitory key signifiers of the protests. As soon as the

political subject of the ‘people’ gains shape it will actuate as the unifying instance of the

demands of the 15M movement. The picture given here about the ‘people’ constructed

by the protesters is consciously held broad. By now, its precise features are all but

concrete and clear-cut. Rather, they are best described as empty signifiers, yet to be

filled with concrete meaning (Laclau, 1996). The political subject of the ‘people’ has

potentials to function as surface of a variety of political inscriptions. Its capacity to

hegemonize the social space and, as it were, function as a horizon of radical struggles

of either shape is sound. As were labour movement or new social movements in the

past, the ‘people’ could be the political subject of Spain in the years to come. The

31

Popular Sovereignty

Oppression Virtue

Politicians, Bankers, Businessmen

El Pueblo (The ‘People’)

Figure 2: The ‘People’ as the Political Subject of the Indignados

adjoining figure illustrates the hallmarks of the ‘people’ as imagined by the

indignados (Figure 2).

After having spoken about the hegemonic strategy of the indignados, the other

side of the coin: their questioning of the present-day order is to be briefly focused on.

As became clear, the ‘contingent side’ of the 15M movement’s strategy is revealed in

its query of the two hegemonic ideologies of the Transición and neo-liberalism. As

shown, the movement reoccupies respectively seizes the hallmarks of both ideologies.

Herewith, they in potentia undergo a dislocation. Following Laclau, I conceive a

dislocation as the moment when an ideology loses its objective and, as it were,

naturalised meaning and is challenged (Laclau, 1996, 19). The moment of dislocation

is one where the senseless ground of the propositions of an ideology is laid bare.

When an ideology dislocates, its assertions are no longer perceived as natural or

objective, but as contingent and contestable. In this sense, the 15M movement is

successful. The indignados take over their propositions in a subversive manner, the

meaningfulness of the ideologies of the Transición and neo-liberalism potentially

dislocates. To say the least, their frame of meaning is no longer the only possible one,

since their assertions have become a matter of discussion. What the 15M movement

has achieved is, to put it with Althusser (1994), that the Transición and neo-liberalism

no longer stand in truth, but in falsehood.

The dislocations of the Transición and neo-liberalism, central as they were in

the present article, are not a natural process, but the result of a political articulation.

In the rearticulation both ideologies, the 15M movement constructs its own project

32

around the political subject of the ‘people’ to the same extent as it precipitates the

crisis of its opponents. Maybe the crisis of politics and economy is not as objective as

it seemed and it may be more acute to grasp their crisis or, better to say, their

dislocation as the outcome of a political articulation. What is sure is that the ‘people’

invoked by the indignados further challenges the ideologies of the Transición and

neo-liberalism. For this political subject owns features (virtue from the Transición,

sovereignty respectively autonomy from neo-liberalism) that are cut off their

ideological realm and are now being articulated in another, purely juxtaposed

ideology. From this perspective, it is only too natural that the indignados regard the

Transición and neo-liberalism as hindrances to a good order in which the ‘people’ can

after all find a full realisation. We can eventually infer: the 15M movement broadens

the crisis that it claims to only express.

33

V. Conclusion: (4) Historicity

In conclusion, the question of the historicity of the 15M movement is to be posed.

Does the movement really not have common narratives, traditions or histories on

which to draw? While this seemed to be the case at first glance, our discussion has

unveiled another reality. Actually, the indignados draw on a multitude of historical

narratives. But one aspect stands out. The indignados reawaken a grammar of

conflict. They actualise a language of belligerence, friction and dispute that is at odds

with its oblivion in post-francoist Spain. As their ‘Indignation’ itself pinpoints, the

15M movement brings out the divided or, so to say, irreconciled nature of Spain’s

social order. The latter takes shape as a place of struggle and contestation rather than

as a reconciled terrain. For the protesters, conflicts are a matter of the present as

much as they were one of the past. More powerfully than any other political project

since the advent of democracy in 1977, the 15M movement sticks to Spain’s language

of belligerence. The indignados reawaken the inheritance of conflict and overcome its

status as buried memory (Gálvez Biesca, 2008b, 1-52, Santos Juliá, 2006, 7-19).

The reactivation of Spain’s old grammar of conflict is paradigmatic for the way

in which history shapes the 15M movement as a whole. The movement actualises

history as both a heterogeneous and controversial experience, not peacefully shed in

bygone times. The intuition of an ‘ironic historicism’ has proved fruitful insofar as it

concisely captures the sui generis historicity of the 15M movement. This historicity is

not found in more traditional social movements, where strong founding myths and

linear narratives prevail(ed). Standing in stark contrast, for the indignados history is

a lived inheritance and a potential for the future. Remember how the movement

constructs the ‘people’ out of moments inherited from the 19th century and

intertwines them with moments rearticulated from the Transición and neo-

liberalism. Moreover, the past that the movement reactivates is clearly indebted to

narratives that were either forgotten or even defeated in the past. The political subject

of the ‘people’ was uphold by the (now sunken into oblivion) anarchist movement to a

much greater extent than by the socialists or communists, more centred on the

‘working class’. In this light, through the political subject of the indignados run traces

of long-forgotten narratives. At least potentially, nothing impedes to reactivate this

bygone past. Besides, an ‘ironic historicism’ also captures the subversive seizure of

hegemonic positions. Just recall the reoccupation of the moments of the Transición

or the take-over of the neo-liberal mantras. Is it not ironic that those ideologies that

34

have ruled post-francoist Spain are now rearticulated to cast doubt on the state of

affairs which they decisively helped to enforce?

But what will be the future of the movement of indignación? Does an ‘ironic

historicism’ provide an answer here? It does not, for this no longer is a theoretical,

but a political question. However, we should underline that the heterogeneous

historicity of the 15M movement holds keen potentials. Its incipient ideology is not

constrained by any a priori frames (be it a labour tradition or an ecological

narrative). Due to its subversive strategy and its powerful political subject of the

‘people’, the future of the indignados is wide-ranging and not narrowed to a

particular track. Their political road is not set in advance. It is a building side where

all remains to done or, if you prefer, to be won.

35

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