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POLITICS

How the Spanish political laboratory is reconfiguring democracy

On May 15, 2011, Spain was convulsed by one of the most spectacular popular uprisings in its history, and in the history of the modern democratic world.

How the Spanish political laboratory is reconfiguring democracy
With the likes of Pablo Iglesias and Ada Colau coming to power in Spain, we are witnessing the rise of the ‘post-representatives’. Barcelona En Comú/flickr, CC BY-SA

Eight million Spanish citizens took part in the occupation of public squares and buildings in at least 60 towns and cities across the country. The movement of Los Indignados (“the outraged”) was born.

At the time Spanish citizens had plenty to be disgruntled about: economic recession, high unemployment, endemic corruption, cronyism, wasteful and reckless mega-projects, mounting central and local government debt and much else. With both major political parties complicit in these dynamics, the public themselves began searching for an antidote to the “business as usual” mantra offered by the cartel parties and mainstream media.

From that 2011 occupation of public space to the creation of new political parties in 2013 and 2014, politics in Spanish social circles remains as lively as ever today.

The Conversation

The country has been transformed into a democratic laboratory, where the participation and use of new communication strategies – born in peripheral political contexts – are primarily active, open and ready for experimentation and innovation.The Conversation

Radical changes

It’s true that Spanish politics still suffers the same old defects: political corruption, austerity, inequality, inadequate separation of powers (in key sectors such as the judiciary) and limited citizen participation in government. Though reduced to a parliamentary minority, Partido Popular still governs, and it does so without serious modification of its pet policies.

Yet believing that nothing has changed in either Spanish politics or social life is unwarranted.

Several weeks ago, Rodrigo Rato, the former International Monetary Fund director and former Spanish minister of economy under Jose Maria Aznar, was handed a 4.5-year prison sentence.

He was not alone. Thanks to the monitoring work of Xnet, a small activist group from Barcelona, 65 employees of the Spanish banks Caja Madrid and Bankia were found guilty of misappropriating funds.

Since the 2014 local elections, compositions of political parties and city councils in many towns has also radically changed. Some cities are now led by well-known activist figures, including Ada Colau, who in 2015 became the first female mayor of Barcelona.

Madrid, Zaragoza and Cádiz were also among the cities to be governed by new political parties linked to the indignados M15 movement.

In Barcelona and Madrid, experiments are under way with early-warning corruption detectors and bold new forms of citizen participation.

Breaking the spell of parliamentary representation

So why has the M15 movement been so powerful? What was it all about? In its initial phase, expressions of anger took the form of general criticisms of the decadence and disintegration of Spain’s dysfunctional political order. The renowned claim “no nos representan” (“they do not represent us”), together with a demand for democracia real (real democracy), brought together two ideas: the crisis of representation and a craving for more citizen participation.

Signs from M15’s Occupy Puerta del Sol, Madrid, in 2011. Diego Hernández/flickr

 

Then, under the “real democracy” slogan, and to highlight the gap between the promise and reality of Spain’s democratic system, citizens began to create parallel intuitions and processes. They wanted to shame politicians into acknowledging their lack of democratic legitimacy.

What was most innovative in the organisation of this outbreak of public protest was that no traditional political actors were involved. In the place of trade unions and political parties, digital networks played a vital role in organising, mobilising and publicising M15.

Even without mass media coverage (which came only after demonstrations proliferated), outrage spread quickly through many Spanish cities. Faith in the democratic credentials of the Spanish political system crumbled. Citizens were asking: how can the search for an improved democracy be sustained, and what might that mean in practice?

Monitory democracy and the new weapons of the weak

In the era of “monitory democracy”, new forms of representative politics involving people not elected at the polls are flourishing. Citizen efforts to draw attention to institutionalised corruption, secrecy, violence and social injustice become essential demonstrations of the limits of political parties and parliaments.

Indeed, monitory democracy has given new “weapons to the weak” and in some ways turned power relations upside down. Today, citizens and their representatives have a considerable advantage against the secretive and petulant elites who could previously do as they liked in splendid isolation, out of public sight and mind.

This is not to say that we are witnessing the emphatic end of representative politics, only that the ecology of representation is becoming more complex and more dispersed. In Spain and beyond, the aura previously surrounding the political class is clearly being replaced by public disdain.

Introducing the post-representatives

The very fact that there is an attitude of hostility towards parliaments and other forms of representation, however, has cast a shadow over current initiatives in Spain. New contenders cannot escape considerations of transparency and must be the first to modify aspects of political parties to prevent new elites from springing up within them.

Several parties have already introduced defence mechanisms to ensure that leaders do not become arrogant. However, measures like revocation, rotating official positions and reducing salaries for elected positions have their limits.

Much of Podemos’ success is due to the easily identifiable figure of Pablo Iglesias; Ahora Madrid would not be where it is now without Manuela Carmena; and Barcelona en Comú’s election campaign would not have had the same success without the formidable presence of Ada Colau.

Now elected, how will popular former street activist Ada Colau uphold her radical platform in office? Barcelona En Comú/flickr

How is it possible to avoid what seems to be an inherent oxymoron of the new politics – an anti-representative style of representative politics? In a media-saturated environment, where political actions are carried out on a scale involving millions of citizens, there will always be charismatic personalities and visible figureheads who adopt and embody a particular stance on the major questions of the moment; they provide a focus for the ordinary person’s attention.

At the same time, we are witnessing the evolution of political figures whose raison d’etre is to reject the legacy of the politician as representative.

These are the “post-representatives”, representatives who are simultaneously monitory and monitored, even though they have their roots in criticism of the very legacy of politics and politicians.

Ada Colau, who largely came to fame for drawing attention to the shortcomings of the established political elite and of the very democratic process itself, can no longer be regarded as a “street activist”. Following her election as Barcelona’s mayor, she is now at the forefront of action within the political process.

Looking towards the future: innovation or nostalgia?

But it is on this point that numerous observers have questioned just how this more direct political alternative can be put into practice.

Does it imply a desire to keep up the overwhelming impetus of the public forums and assemblies, the memory of which is still very much alive among many activists in the Spanish democratic laboratory?

And if so, is this not a formula for what has been termed “the tyranny of structurelessness” – that is, the transfer of burden to ordinary citizens, who are forced to find the time, energy and “click power” to spend hours in public debates, both on and offline?

Is a new phase of democracy developing in Spain? Or is this just another case of ‘the tyranny of structurelessness’? Photo: Julio Albarrán/flickr

Is it not simply making a fetish of “presence” over “voice”, regardless of how weak or mediated it is by other processes? Why should those with responsibilities for looking after children or older relatives, people who work, or those without access to online participatory digital media become hostages of people who are crazy about politics and perfectly happy to spend all their free time in group debates?

Is there no argument to suggest that the practices of direct, monitory democracy look less to the future than to the past, based perhaps on the nostalgic desire for face-to-face, neighbourhood interactions; a slower, community-based way of life; and other tropes that go back to the assembly democracy of classical Greece? The question arises of whether the danger of this nostalgic ambition is that it starts to move away from the reality of many citizens’ lives.

Still, the lingering ambivalence about parliamentary representation among millions of Spanish citizens is understandable. Simply going back to the mass political parties with their memberships of millions seems highly improbable.

Whatever happens to representative politics, we are observing an extraordinary desire to rethink the basic coordinates of democratic life in Spain. It is not easy to think of another modern political system where this sense of contingency runs so deep, and where the alternatives seem so real.

By Ramón Andrés Feenstra, Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy, Universitat Jaume I; Andreu Casero-Ripolles, Associate Professor of Journalism and Political Communication, Universitat Jaume I; John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of Sydney, and Simon Tormey, Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney

This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative with the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. 

The main arguments of this article were abridged from the authors’ forthcoming book Reconfiguring Democracy, published by Routledge. It will be the first in the Crick Centre’s new Anti-Politics and Democratic Crisis book series co-edited by Matt Wood.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

For members

PROPERTY

Why Spain is unlikely to ever ban foreigners from buying property

After several regions around Spain have attempted to bring in limits on property purchases by foreigners, members of Spain's government coalition have even started floating the idea of an outright ban at a national level.

Why Spain is unlikely to ever ban foreigners from buying property

In recent years several regions around Spain have attempted to put limits on foreigners buying homes and clamped down on tourist rentals. These are mainly in areas traditionally popular with foreigners, and many have become places with highly inflationary property markets.

In 2022 Canary nationalist political party Nueva Canarias demanded the regional government address the large number of property purchases by non-residents in the archipelago, and even suggested a limit on the number of properties that can be bought by foreigners altogether in the popular holiday islands.

READ ALSO: Will Spain’s Canary Islands limit sale of properties to foreigners?

Property prices have surged across Spain in recent years, sparked in part by an influx of post-pandemic purchases by foreigners, as well as tourist accommodation geared towards wealthy remote workers and digital nomads pushing up rental prices and pricing out locals. Increasingly, landlords will buy properties with the aim of converting them into Airbnbs, thus removing them from the pool of available (and affordable) housing stock for locals.

This comes after Spain’s other archipelago, the Balearic Islands, also started this same debate in November 2022, with the regional Senate agreeing to discuss solutions.

In the two decades from 2000-2020, the islands’ population grew by 50 percent – rising from 823,000 to 1,223,000 inhabitants. Around a third (32.67 percent) of property purchases in the Balearics are made by foreigners, and of those 57.4 percent are residents, while the remaining 42.6 percent are non-residents.

National ban?

But it’s not just a regional issue. In 2024, the debate rumbles on in parts of Spain particularly affected by foreign home owners and members of the Spanish government are even proposing similar measures at a national level. Though, it should be said, no policy has been decided on yet, and any move such as a ban (in whatever form, on whatever type of property) or even a limit would likely face fierce opposition from the main opposition parties, notably the centre-right Partido Popular (PP).

Sumar, the far-left junior coalition partner in the Spanish government, has even gone as far as proposing a three year ban on the purchase of housing by investment funds and non-residents in Spain.

This was recently outlined in a (for now) non-legislative proposal that was presented to the Spanish Congress’ Housing Commission. It was roundly rejected with the vote of, among others, its coalition partner in government, the Socialists (PSOE). That’s not to say the PSOE is totally against the idea, however.

Socialist Minister for Housing Isabel María Pérez said of the plans: “We agree on the philosophy of the proposal, but with nuances,” she said. “We have submitted an amendment but we think it will not be accepted, so we will not be able to support this bill,” she added.

So, from that we can take that the junior partner in the Spanish government wants to ban non-residents and investment funds from buying property in Spain, and the senior partner (Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s party, no less) supports the principle but not the practicalities.

READ ALSO: Spain’s new housing minister vows to protect second homeowners

The argument against

Clearly, non-resident foreigners buying up property in Spain, particularly in its space starved archipelagos, contributes to price inflation, saturates the market, and plays a role in pricing locals out of their own neighbourhoods.

However, it’s not that simple. Clearly, there is a difference between a non-resident foreigner buying a holiday home (perhaps to rent out as tourist accommodation for half the year) and a resident foreigner buying property to live in.

READ ALSO: How important are foreign second homeowners to Spain?

This difference has, for now, been reflected in proposed limits at both the regional and national level, rather than outright bans.

However, foreign home owners in Spain also make a huge contribution to the Spanish economy. In 2022 foreigners with a second home in Spain contributed €6.35 billion to Spanish GDP and generated more than 105,000 jobs in the tourism sector, according to the study “The economic impact of residential tourism in Spain” done for the Spanish Association of Developers and Builders (APCE) by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The financial contribution made by these second-home owners in Spain is clearly significant. In fact, experts point out that the money brought into the Spanish coffers by foreign homeowners even outstrips some major industries.

“The contribution of residential tourism to GDP is triple that of the textile industry, double that of the timber industry and the same as the manufacture of pharmaceutical products in Spain,” Anna Merino, director of the Economics team at PwC, said when presenting the study. Every euro spent by ‘residential tourists’ adds €2.34 to Spanish GDP. On top of this direct contribution to the Spanish economy, the surrounding economic activity associated with the spending generated 105,600 full-time jobs in 2022.

So, there’s clearly an economic argument against banning foreign property purchases completely.

In the case of the Balearic Islands specifically, the proposals have met some opposition. The Balearics, which generates 35 percent of its GDP from tourism, according to figures from Caixa Bank, has long been a holiday or second-home hub for wealthy foreigners.

On this point, right-wing Popular Party member Sebastià Sagreras suggested in the regional parliament back in 2022 that conflating the foreign-buyer property market with local shortages is unhelpful, adding that the properties bought by foreigners, often worth more than a million euros, “do not compete” with those that cost €200,000 or €250,000 and are largely bought or rented by national residents.

Is it even legally possible?

Denmark, Malta and the Aland Islands in Finland all have restrictions on how non-resident foreigners can buy properties in their territories. However, they introduced these before entering the EU and these limits were factored in and accepted by Brussels. For Spain to do this, it would be much more difficult.

For local authorities in both the Balearic and the Canary Islands it could prove difficult to go against the EU’s legal principles of the free movement of people and capital, experts say.

This means that other potential solutions may be needed. Though there doesn’t seem to be a national level ban on foreigners from buying properties in Spain anytime soon, several regions have been attempting to do it for a couple of years, at least for non-residents, and even the national government is beginning to try and do something about it.

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