Lessons from the PAH in a volatile political context: social movements between restoration and rupture/ Licoes a partir do PAH em um contexto politico volatil: movimentos sociais entre restauracao e ruptura.
| Autor | Allende, Ivan Molina |
Introduction
The Spanish state finds itself amidst a process of deep political crisis that affects the credibility of the prevailing economic and political institutional order. A major breakthrough took place in May 2011, with the 15M/Indignados movement, when thousands contested in the squares and in the streets the management of the crisis and the decomposition of the representative mandate ("they do not represent us"). The 15M decentralized itself and mutated into different forms and movements against the effects of austerity, generating a network of resistance experiences connected to the claim of real democracy and social rights: the PAH (Platform of the Affected by Mortgages), the colorful mareas (movements in defense of public services), localized struggles against repression (gag law, political prisoners, etc), citizen movements against ecological degradation throughout the territory (fracking, open pit mining in Galicia, oil explorations in Canary Islands, conflicts against privatization of water, etc...), strongly symbolic indefinite labor strikes (i.e. Panrico, Coca-Cola, Telefonica-Movistar, etc.), feminist movement mobilizations against the abortion counter-reform and gender violence, etc. All of them present a vibrant map of social self-organization, democratic experimentation and consciousness rising in the last years. Additionally to that, the defiance towards the state by the independentist movement in Catalunya has been escalating since 2011, and represents nowadays one of the biggest challenges for the prevailing territorial and political model upon which the Spanish governance system rests. Since May 2014, the discontent starts to materialize in the electoral scenario too, with the appearance of Podemos and the breeding of popular unity candidatures that take over main city governments across the country (with Barcelona and Madrid at the head); crystallizing that society in movement identified with the 15M claims of democracy, participation and social justice.
In the last two years, the political scenario draws an unstable window of opportunity that oscillates between a potential restoration of the regime "from above" (elite directed) or a democratic rupture (from below) that the first institutional assaults of the regional & municipal election envisages. This confronted options also evidences in the elites' will to carry a constitutional reform, which clashes with the claims for the opening of constituent processes (multiple and non-subordinated, like in the case of Catalunya). This unstable scenario is unconditionally tied to the endeavors of recomposition and regeneration of the Spanish financial and real-estate sectors (enforced through concrete policies by neoliberal parties 'of order'), removing any possibility for future rights-based public intervention and eventually rendering ineffectual the institutional capacity to execute redistributive--or social justice--measures. On the other hand the opening of constituent processes, participated by the citizenship and shove by active social counter-powers, intend (according to forces like Podemos, and referents in the municipalist experiences, the so-called "governments of change") to constitutionalize basic social and labor rights, redefining and sealing a new social Magna Carta. With all certitude, the rupturist option fits hardly within the actual European neoliberal institutional architecture, and a debate over the implications of claiming back political and economic sovereignty is still to come.
The PAH in the frame of the actual political and economic crisis
In that context the PAH, as the main actor in defense of the right to housing...
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