The Indignados Movement in Barcelona. Framing the Crisis and Democracy

2011 has witnessed a “new cycle of protest” (Tarrow, 1997). After the so-called “Arab spring”, citizens movements have swept across Western countries, starting from the demonstrations of the “Geraçao a Rasca” in Portugal, then taking a much wider scope in May in Spanish squares, and resonating in other European cities under the “indignados” and “Occupy” umbrella terms. This paper aims at shedding light on how the indignados movement in Spain frames its perception of the crisis and the potential solutions to it in order to change a situation seen as unjust, and how this articulation relates to conceptions of „real democracy“ by the movement. In order to identify frames, participant observation undertaken for one year and half in Barcelona is complemented with thematic analysis (Johnston, 2002) of transcripts of 40 in-depth interviews and 4 focus groups, and of documents produced by the movement. The indignados movement has been depicted as having been ignited as a response to the global economic crisis and the approaches taken by the European Union and the Spanish government to handle it. Nevertheless, while prompted by the crisis, the 15M is not simply issue driven. It develops a critique of the overall society. The metapolitical critique (Offe, 1985) is intrinsically linked with the identification of a “multi-dimensional crisis”, involving not just an economic, but a political, social and environmental dimensions, motivating the need for deep structural society changes, involving the core of its symbolic production, values. Not only one important frame has moral connotations – the social justice frame– but Occupiers have also embraced and articulated the sharing and caring morality (Langman, 2012). The collective identity of the 15M has also gradually shifted toward being relatively more politicized and less heterogeneous in terms of positions, strengthening its prefigurative politics dimension.