Mapping Everyday Hostility: Relief Maps of Anti-Gender and Antifeminist Opposition to Feminist Activists in Spain

Worldwide, populist, far-right, and autocratic actors have intensified pressure on civil society organisations, accelerating democratic backsliding and shrinking civic space. In this contracting environment, violence against women, LGBTIQ+ people, and racialised actors in politics is increasingly visible, yet the patterned targeting of feminist advocates remains underexamined. Also recurrent in formally democratic settings, political violence (understood as the use or threat of violence for political aim) remains understudied in these contexts, even as it impoverishes representation and masculinises the political sphere. When directed at individuals and organisations advancing the feminist project, it functions to obstruct equality policies, police participation and dissent, and derail broader transformative projects. This paper presents qualitative findings from feminist activists in the Spanish state, using Relief Maps (a method that enables participants to reflect on experiences and their emotions across everyday spaces) to document, visualise, and analyse how hostility and political violence are encountered and navigated. Spain is a revealing setting where robust feminist mobilisation coexists with consolidating far-right parties, organisations, and activist networks. The paper examines experiences and emotions across social media, public space, workplaces, families, and bodies, and across four forms of activism: feminist, LGBTIQ+, antiracist, and pro-independence, asking: (1) How do these harms manifest across spaces? (2) How do they vary across forms of activism? Conceptually, we situate these attacks as mechanisms of democratic erosion that police participation, delegitimize dissent, and constrain public life, targeting feminism for its capacity to challenge entrenched inequalities and power. Centring activists’ situated accounts and a spatial–affective lens, we show the utility of Relief Maps for linking experiences and emotions across spaces amid civil-society attacks. The article advances debates on democratic erosion and gendered political violence in three ways. Empirically, we trace patterned harms, emotions and coping strategies as opposition reverberates across spaces and forms of activism. Conceptually, we theorise intersectional harms as tools for regulating dissent, highlighting how gender, sexuality, race, origin, ideology, and political violence intersect within backlashes against human rights and the global rise of antifeminism/anti-gender. Methodologically, we connect micro-experiences to macro dynamics, showcasing Relief Maps as a useful method for analyzing violent experiences.