Movimiento 15M valencia 20-05-2011, picture of Fito Senabre (Flickr).

(Read in French) Sweeping across the plazas of Spain in 2011, the grassroots anti-austerity and free culture campaign known as Movimiento 15 (15M) has, as the Guardian’s Katherine Ainger argues, so deeply permeated the Spanish psyche that “indignation is becoming a generalized condition.” On Sunday, May 15, 2011, close to 20,000 people attended demonstrations in more than fifty Spanish cities, mobilized by the slogan “Real Democracy Now! We are not merchandise in the hands of politicians and bankers!” They understood Spain’s economic crisis to be inseparable from a political one, and called for a restoration of participatory democratic politics. During the weeks that followed, thousands of Indignados (Indignants) occupied the plazas of Spain, exploiting the power of digital tools to both share information and compel people into action. The assemblies were non-hierarchical open assemblies that anyone could partake in and embodiments of the participatory democracy for which the Indignados called. They took the ruling elites by surprise.

Organizing itself to ensure its survival

Contrary to popular belief, the movement was not spontaneous. It had been planned by a number of civil society groups for months, and had a highly complex organizational structure (read Theo Milosevic’s article on the importance of structure for scaling). By June 2011, when it became clear that the police were going to dismantle the camps, the movement made a concerted decision to take advantage of the growing momentum and evolve in order to ensure its survival. Rather than call for participants to “toma la plaza” (“take the square”), members were summoned to “toma los barrios” (“take the neighbourhoods”). At regular intervals throughout the year, the neighbourhood assemblies meet in Madrid at the Sol General Assembly to discuss their progress and share ideas. The decentralization of the movement has been, for the most part, responsible for its survival; however, the transition from the plaza to the barrio has not been without its challenges.

While already a horizontally structured movement, the Indignados began their move from Spain’s urban centres to the periphery with the hashtags #We’reNotLeaving #We’reMoving. They were also keen to let law enforcement authorities know that #WeKnowTheWayBack. This shift to the barrio is also reflected by Twitter analytics. A number of scholars studying the evolution of 15M concluded that when classified by urban or local origin, tweets indicated a trend towards decentralization from the urban to the local.

The advantages of decentralization are numerous. According to one individual who participated in 15M in both Madrid and his local assembly, “The neighbourhood assembly was more efficient because it was flexible. We didn’t waste time with absurd nuances.” Indeed, many barrios opted to make decisions by majority rule as opposed to by consensus, which was the process in the plazas and was often quite cumbersome and inefficient. While some barrios still reached decisions by consensus, neighbourhood assemblies tended to be more homogenous groups, and thus reached decisions more swiftly.

Revitalizing older movements to deal with more local issues

Additionally, the neighbourhood assemblies addressed issues that were more salient for that particular barrio. They mediated between the immediate problems of their barrio and the more general or abstract discourses of the plazas. In Mortalez, a neighbourhood east of Madrid, an older population meant that issues related to health and pensions were atop the agenda. In San Blas, the neighbourhood assembly created a Time Bank, which allows neighbours to exchange services amongst themselves without money. Instead, the unit of currency is one hour of a person’s labour, providing incentives and rewards for work, and putting economic power back in local hands. In Madrid, neighbourhood assemblies formed the Brigadas Vecinales de Observacíon de los Derechos Humanos (the Neighbourhood Bridgaes for Human Rights Monitoring), which have been successful in both publicizing police brutality of immigrants in cities with large immigrant communities and shaming the police forces into stopping this practice.

One of the most important outputs of the neighbourhood assemblies has been the Stop Desahucios campaign to stop forced evictions. Here, neighbourhood assemblies partnered with their local branch of the Plataforma de Afectados por lo Hipoteca (PAH), the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, to stop evictions. The neighbourhood assemblies allied with one another to share information and aid in coordination. They played a large role in collecting information about planned evictions, registering them online, and organizing mobilizations of activists on eviction dates. Between 2011 and 2012, they managed to stop over 100 evictions in Madrid alone. This horizontal network clustering around a particular issue is a structure that may prove useful in other social campaigns. Here, decentralization worked because those who were most familiar with a particular problem in a barrio were also those who were most qualified to fix it.

The movement to the barrios revitalized the role of the neighbourhood assembly, which after playing a crucial role in the local democratic transition process of the 1970s, had largely become demobilized. When these neighbourhood assemblies became “invitation only” during the 1990s, a great deal of sectarianism occurred between neighbourhood groups and sentiments of mutual distrust swelled.

Potential drawbacks of the decentralization process

Nevertheless, the move to the barrios has not been entirely seamless. Decentralization has meant that some barrios see smaller numbers of participants than others or so few numbers of participants that they do not exist at all. In others, the individuals who attend meetings are not representative of the barrio as a whole, ensuring that one particular group monopolizes the decision-making process.

Additionally, one interview participant noted a decline in attendance when it became too cold or too hot. In Lavapiés, a neighbourhood in Madrid, there was great debate over where exactly to hold the neighbourhood assembly meetings. The neighbourhood’s main square, Plaza de Prosperidad, has the advantage of being the most recognizable and central meeting point of the city; however, it possesses no trees or shade, which made meetings during the summer months unbearable. Some assemblies have stopped sending their chairs to the coordinating meetings between assemblies because of transportation difficulties or bad weather. These are concerns that other social campaigns considering decentralization would do well to ponder.

One common concern about decentralization is leadership diffusion, which can create greater uncertainty and a loss of control over decision-making processes. This was less of an issue in this particular case because in order to practice participatory and deliberative democracy, the movement decided that it should have no leaders. Instead, decisions were to be arrived at by consensus and rotating moderators and spokespeople were used for assembly meetings. This was to ensure that no one group or person was able to monopolize the agenda or to emerge as a leader. In the plazas, this slowed the decision-making process considerably. Neighbourhood assemblies veered away from consensus decision-making in certain instances and were thus more efficient.

A centralized organizational hierarchy may be less effective if a social campaign requires a great deal of flexibility and individualization. Here, while the demonstrators were united in their fight against the configuration of the two-party political system and austerity measures, they were a heterogeneous group with no explicitly defined goals. The movement to the barrios forced them to work on finding solutions to these political and economic problems at the micro level, which proved more efficient. It’s also worth noting that the structures of the neighbourhood assemblies were already in place in the barrios. Even if they had proven to be ineffective in the past, there was at least a process and a model already established. They were not starting from scratch. In campaigns where these structures do not exist, leadership diffusion and disorganization may emerge as major problems. Finally, the choice of organizational design is highly dependant on the type of people available to the campaign. Where a campaign has a highly trusted membership and a great deal of momentum and ideology to leverage, decentralization is more effective than when a campaign is unsure of the commitment level of its members.