A year ago today, a new movement emerged at the very heart of Madrid that for a brief period seemed set to break the rigid two-party mould of Spanish politics.
The indignados (indignants) who surged in their tens thousands into Spain’s Kilometre Zero, the central plaza of the Puerta del Sol, clearly wanted to break the mould of Spanish politics altogether.
They became known as the 15-M movement, and were a major influence on the “Occupy!” groups that subsequently spread across the developed world.
But after dramatic weeks camping out in the centres of many Spanish cities, and debating everything from the global financial crisis to the need for more bicycle lanes, the movement appeared to ebb away.
Sweeping victories in subsequent local and national elections by the deeply conservative Partido Popular (PP) suggested that the 15-M had completely failed to achieve any significant political traction.
But over the last three days, the same movement has resurfaced right across the country, in massive and colourful processions including ranging from deadly serious far- leftists to playful clowns. But mostly the participants are just ordinary citizens, baffled and angered by a political crisis that has deepened dramatically over the 12 months since they first appeared on the streets.
Their critics say that the 15-M is a rag, tag and bobtail affair, a loose association of malcontents without anything constructive to offer Spanish society.
The PP frequently denounces them for resurrecting the totalitarian dreams of sectors of the Spanish left in the past, attempting to subvert parliamentary democracy through easily manipulable mobs on the streets.
The left-wing parties view them with suspicion, and blame them for diverting attention from the need to confront the conservatives at the polls.
The 15-M originaly emerged out of an internet fraternity calling itself “Real Democracy NOW”, and indeed clamoured for assembly-based decision-making, and plebiscites on practically everything.
The trigger for its arrival on the scene was the collapse of Spain’s property bubble, revelations of widespread political corruption, and surging unemployment, which now affects 50 per cent of Spanish young people.
But it has attracted a surprisingly broad range of loose affiliates. Its apparent evaporation during the year has been illusory. Anyone who wanted to look would find 15-M activists working on a wide range of projects in local communites, some more than a little hare-brained, many others practical and useful.
Its anniversary and reappearance has coincided with quite extraordinary events in the Spanish financial and political worlds. Last week the government moved to nationalise Spain’s third largest bank, Bankia, reversing a promise that no public money would be invested in failing financial institutions. This provoked fury among people who have seen their health and education services cut to the marrow, and watched jobs evaporate by the thousand.
On Friday, amid speculation that property-related bad loans could amount to one trillion euro in indebtedness across the whole spectrum of Spanish banking, the government instructed the banks to find a further €30 billion in contingency funds.
These events go a long way to explain the strength of the revival of the 15-M. But there is also a widespread sense that the very scale of the crisis dwarfs the movement, which remains long on slogans and rhetoric, but short on strategy for recovery.
“Return the country to the citizens,” protestors repeatedly chanted as they marched. What kind of country the citizens would get, if they got it back, remains a very open question.