Social movements and the democratisation of local government in Spain (2011-2018)

Four years after the start of the 15M movement through which Spaniards shouted their quest for real democracy onto the country’s main city squares, “popular candidacies” won the 2015 municipal elections in several big cities. The instatement of activists from various social movements as mayors and city councillors was a concrete victory for grassroots mobilisation. But it was also just a beginning, as the democratisation of municipal institutions now needed to start in earnest. With less than a year to go before the 2019 municipal elections, the intended goals are far from being realised. How can we understand the results and obstacles for realisation of these local democratic experiments? In this paper we focus on the difficulties of the new governments when dealing with the claims of the very social movements from which they emerged. We will do so by presenting the preliminary results of 90 in-depth interviews with mayors, city councillors and activists from various social movements in six Spanish cities. We first discuss the role of the social movements in the rise to power of the ‘popular candidacies’ in Spain. Secondly, we address the relationships between these progressive local governments (internationally framed as a “municipalist” trend) and the various urban movements around housing, community spaces, and local services. Thirdly, we employ this analysis to interpret the outcomes of the democratisation of the municipalities, and the improvement of social equality and welfare.