Confronting Spain’s crises: from the language of the plazas to the rise of Podemos

In 2010, on the heels of the global financial crisis, two major crises hit Spain as its massive real estate bubble burst. The first was economic and had disastrous effects in all sectors of Spanish society. The second was a crisis of political legitimacy which called into question the validity of the very political institutions created during the transition from the Francoist dictatorship to democracy. What is particularly unique about Spain’s contemporary experience is that the financial crisis, by putting people in serious economic peril, opened a dialogue about the lost opportunities in the transition from fascism to democracy. The rapid politicization of a massive component of Spanish society post-crisis amounted to a collective awakening, best captured by a popular slogan of protest in 2011 ‘dormíamos, despertamos.’ Tracing some the history of the language of the plazas from Spain’s most important post-crisis protests to the language of institutional change, reveals both the profound effects of the global financial crisis as well as the cultural and generational shift in the contemporary political arena. This paper analyzes the way in which these new movements present a alternative to the political narrative.