Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

uu.sePublications from Uppsala University
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Citizens, Squatters, Homeowners and Tenants: Housing Activism Facing the Structures of Democratization and Capitalism in Spain
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute for Housing and Urban Research.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5511-2390
2025 (English)In: The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Twentieth-And Twenty-First Century Spain: Ideas, Practices, Imaginings / [ed] Eduardo Ledesma; Luisa Elena Delgado, New York: Routledge, 2025, p. 49-62Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

The transitional period to a recovered democratic regime in Spain during the late 1970s was substantially shaped by large working-class mobilizations in the domains of production and reproduction (unpaid housework, access to housing, urban facilities, etc.). The so-called “citizens' movement” championed urban struggles in addition to demands for a democratic political regime. Despite their rapid decline in the 1980s, these movements left a significant mark in the process of democratization and fueled the right to protest of the social movements that followed. The 1986 integration of Spain into supranational European institutions engendered a new stage of capitalist development and neoliberal policies. Real estate speculation in major cities became the main driver of urban change and shaped the conditions for the emergence and growth of new grassroots and anti-capitalist activism such as the squatter movement (okupas). In addition to the occupation of houses, squatters showed their capacity to self-manage squatted social centers and to aggregate various social movements. Simultaneously squatters called attention to the new cycle of capitalist accumulation in Spanish and European cities alike. With transnational waves of protest and rapid economic changes, the alter-globalization and anti-war movements in the early 2000s, first, and the Occupy and anti-austerity uprisings in the early 2010s, next, sparked new housing mobilizations in Spain. The effects of the global financial crisis in terms of unemployment, indebtedness and home evictions were followed by broad grassroots contestation. Housing groups associated with neighborhood assemblies, the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH) and tenants’ unions took the lead on lengthy campaigns led primarily by women and migrants. This chapter provides a long-term historical account of the housing struggles in Spain since the 1970s by identifying the main features of these forms of collective action and the political economy context with which they interacted. In particular, I argue that these expressions of housing activism were not only closely related to other social movements but, above all, were dependent on specific structural conditions of the Spanish political, economic and housing system. My analysis also contributes to the interpretations of the changing sociological components of housing struggles in relation to the societal context at large.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
New York: Routledge, 2025. p. 49-62
Series
Routledge Companions to Hispanic and Latin American Studies, ISSN 2835-5032, E-ISSN 2835-5024
Keywords [en]
Housing, Activism, Capitalism, Democracy, Spain
National Category
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
Research subject
Sociology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-552406DOI: 10.4324/9780367810207-5Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105002878760ISBN: 9780367810207 (electronic)ISBN: 9780367409692 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-552406DiVA, id: diva2:1944501
Available from: 2025-03-14 Created: 2025-03-14 Last updated: 2026-09-07Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Martínez, Miguel A.

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Martínez, Miguel A.
By organisation
Institute for Housing and Urban Research
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
isbn
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
isbn
urn-nbn
Total: 87 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf