Natalie Fenton (NF): What did your extensive study of the 15-M movement in Spain tell us about how we reclaim concepts such as democracy in systems where it is so often corrupted and hollowed out of meaning? What has happened to the radical democratic agendas that traditionally served dissident struggles?
Cristina Flesher Fominaya (CFF): Right now, we are witnessing a real struggle for democracy. If 10 years ago the struggle in 15-M and some of the movements of the squares was for “real” substantive democracy that lived up to the ideals classically associated with it and served the needs of citizens, today the fight is on for its very survival in contexts we previously took for granted as “democratic” such as the United States of America. So, I think it is actually a great time to go back and reflect on this movement that so powerfully shifted the public conversation about democracy in Spain and around the world, that built a powerful and sustained movement, and that transformed the political landscape in profound and unexpected ways.
As I describe in the book, what 15-M did was to engage in a powerful process of critique and resignification of democracy. The movement first engaged in a profound critique of really existing democracy in the context of a “crisis” that activists argued was actually a swindle, whereby the public bore the cost of the failures of private financial interests with the active complicity of political elites.
