Evictions, petitions and escraches : contentious housing in austerity Spain

Abstract

In the context of the new period of mobilization begun in Spain with the rise of the indignados in May 2011, protests against home evictions are today at the center of local and international discussions. This article seeks to make an initial examination of these mobilizations and their relationship with routine politics in Spain. After a brief historical introduction the article looks at the different kinds of action, both contentious and conventional, employed by the movement against the evictions, as well as the various scale shift mechanisms that have diversified the number and range of actors involved in this particular case of contentious politics. The conclusions look at the question of as to what point recent developments have broken with the deep-rooted tendency toward a lack of interaction between protest movements and institutional actors.