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Social Movement Studies
Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest
ISSN: 1474-2837 (Print) 1474-2829 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csms20
The Free Culture and 15M Movements in Spain:
Composition, Social Networks and Synergies
Mayo Fuster Morell
To cite this article: Mayo Fuster Morell (2012) The Free Culture and 15M Movements in Spain:
Composition, Social Networks and Synergies, Social Movement Studies, 11:3-4, 386-392, DOI:
10.1080/14742837.2012.710323
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2012.710323
Published online: 07 Aug 2012.
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The Free Culture and 15M Movements
in Spain: Composition, Social Networks
and Synergies
MAYO FUSTER MORELL
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
ABSTRACT This profile discusses the organization, goals and practices of the Spanish 15M
movement. I argue that it developed as a complex, multi-layered ecosystem, mobilizing a new
generation of citizens through the convergence of struggles over housing and the Free Culture and
Digital Commons Movement (FCM), creating a common framework for action through social
networks. Primarily in and through the actions in public squares, the 15M movement also constructed
further layers of mobilization, incorporating the networks and skills of previous social movements
(such as those mobilizing over inter alia education, health, alternative consumption) and connecting
with previous generations who had mobilized over civil liberties in transition to democracy.
Furthermore, I argue that links with the Free Culture Movement had a profound effecton the genealogy
of 15M—in terms of its composition, agenda, framing and organizational logic. The methodology is
based on case studies of both the FCM and 15M between December 2010 and December 2011 in Spain.
KEY WORDS: Organizational logic, Free Culture Movement, 15M mobilization, new technologies
of information and communication, social movements, Spain
Spain has recently witnessed the emergence of a wave of social mobilization, starting on
15M (15 May 2011), featuring some of the largest occupations of public squares since the
country transitioned to democracy in the 1970s. The 15M—alternatively known as
indignados mobilization—caused surprise not only because of the size of the protest but
also by its character. With new technologies in information and communication (ICTs)
playing an important role in the mobilization process, the 15M movement has become the
latest and greatest exponent of a self-mobilization or social network format organized
through the Internet.
It is also characterized, in the current context of multi-crisis, by the contention
surrounding information, culture and knowledge regulation (Lessig, 2004). The emergence
of the Free Culture and Digital Commons Movement (FCM) is a sign of this conflict
(Fuster Morell, 2010) as it supports a vision of accessibility and flow of information and
knowledge, and open and collaborative formats of knowledge creation (such as software or
other types of immaterial content), instead of proprietary and restrictive visions. The FCM
not only places the regulation of the Internet and ICTs at the heart of its political agenda but
1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/12/3– 40386-7 q2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2012.710323
Correspondence Address: Mayo Fuster Morell, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University,
23 Everett Street, 2nd Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Email: mayo.fuster@eui.eu
Social Movement Studies,
Vol. 11, Nos. 3 – 4, 386–392, August– November 2012
also makes extensive use of ICTs in achieving its goals of mobilization and organization
(Fuster Morell & Subirats, 2012).
This profile first presents the components of the 15M wave of mobilization, then presents
an analysis of the ways that the FCM might have interacted with the 15M and ultimately
influenced the growth of the 15M. The methodology is based on case studies of both
movements in Spain between December 2010 and December 2011. Several qualitative
methods were employed. Virtual ethnography of websites and participative observation of
events were conducted to become familiar with the actors, the organizational logic, and to
obtain an overall view. A detailed analysis of 25 interviews, and audiovisual materials and
documents, was used to identify actors, organizational forms, and to interpret the links
between the FCM and the 15M.
The Wave of Mobilization Through Social Networks Arrives in Spain:
A Surprising Start
In a context of social discontent, and of growing mobilization in other countries, Anonymous
and individual citizens started to mobilize themselves through social networks to conceive
and prepare a general call to citizens for mobilization. In March 2011, a group of collectives
decided to create a common platform, Real Democracy Now (RDN). Since 15 May 2011,
this initial call has generated an unexpected and spectacular wave of mobilizations in Spain.
In the words of the organizers:
Call [ ...] to organize a large protest throughout Spain before the coming municipal
elections [ ...] to denounce the deplorable situation in which citizens suffer from
severe abuse caused by political and economic powers. (Call Mobilization
Demonstration, 15 May).
Common to all the collectives involved were factors such as new initiatives (created in the
previous months and without strong ties to previous social movements) and, more
importantly, the sharing of common views and principles on an organizational model based
on the reliability of ICTs in general and of social networks more specifically, being used
both as a tool and simultaneously as an inspiring organizational format (Interview, member
RDN, 17 September 2011).
The organizational and communicative model of a social network was primarily inspired
by Internet use in Arab countries, with a few precedents in Spain itself. Important among
those precedents were the revolt of 14 March 2003 to protest the Government reaction to the
Madrid train attacks, the housing movement of 2006, and various campaigns of the FCM.
The mobilization achieved in the 15M demonstration exceeded all expectations. On the
night of 15M, a group of Madrid residents (with a significant presence of hackers) decided
spontaneously to encamp at ‘Plaza del Sol’ (Intervention, member RDN, 3 June 2011).
Similar encampments subsequently proliferated in the main squares of several Spanish
cities and later extended, in acts of solidarity, worldwide.
Composition of the 15M: Precedents and Synergies Around the 15M Mobilization
It is not easy to describe the overall composition of the 15M. The Global Justice Movement
(GJM) of the early 2000s has been described as a ‘movement of movements’ (della Porta &
Mosca, 2005). However, this characterization does not suit the 15M, as it has many more
The Free Culture and 15M Movements 387
interactions and synergies of a plurality of components which together create a complex
system composed of interacting or interdependent components or layers that form an
integrated whole.
The configuration of a new generation of mobilized citizens who had not previously
mobilized, or at least not in the last cycle of the GJM, is particularly relevant in the Spanish
case. For many participants, the organization of the 15M demonstration was their first
political experience (Intervention, member RDN, 18 June 2011). These new participants
were mobilized and organized through social networks and by starting new collectives.
Even so, the early 15M composition went beyond these new participants, evolving further
with the confluence of previous mobilization trajectories and the accumulation of
knowledge that had an affinity with the organizational spirit of the 15M. In this regard, the
15M was also formed by the confluence of previous movements. The most important of
these are the housing movement, the opposition to and denunciation of the banking system,
and the FCM (Intervention, member RDN, 22 May 2011).
In 2006 and 2007, mass mobilizations occurred demanding the right to respectable
(fair, decent) housing in Spain. Some parts of this movement have remained active since
then, becoming more forceful with the bursting of the real-estate bubble to form the platform
of those affected by mortgages (PAH), which had a notable presence befor e 15M, and helped
to increase the numbers for that mobilization. The housing movement’s demands became
more visible alongside the demands of the 15M movement, with the development of direct
solidarity actions among neighbors to stop housing evictions resulting from mortgage
non-payment (Intervention, member PAH, 27 October 2011). The housing movement also
influenced the 15M in adopting a speech and an esthetic that broke with the correctness of
previous political languages, to connect with the emerging youth cultures (Haro, 2010).
Another movement that contributed to the early 15M was the opposition to the banking
system. In 2008, activist Enric Duran (given the name Robin Bank by the press) hacked
more than 30 banks and extracted almost half a million Euros in credits that he later used to
finance newspapers that explained his actions and provide information on functioning
projects outside the capitalist economy (Interview, Enric Duran, 15 May 2011).
The anti-austerity mobilizations against cuts in public services such as healthcare and
education were already highly mobilized before 15M; however, they converged after the
15M mobilization within the 15M system in the public squares. The same applied to the
occupied social centers and other subsets from the previous wave of the GJM, which played a
key role in the growth of the public squares movement, and the later migration to the
neighborhoods (Interview, member of occupied social center, 23 May 2011). The squares
also attracted a plurality of alternative visions of society, from diverse traditional political
orthodoxies through to mystical groups, and regular occupants of public spaces, such as the
homeless.
In this sense, the alternatives resulting from the waves of the GJM also joined the
occupation of the squares. After the major demonstrations against the World Bank,
International Monetary Fund and the European Union before 2004, the GJM in Spain
transformed its energy into putting alternatives into action, which by 2011 had reached
maturity. This was the case with the networks of solidarity interchange, such as the time
bank, the networks of interchange of knowledge, the networks of interchange of goods
(trueque) and the cooperatives of agro-ecological consumption (Ubasart et al., 2009).
The squares were like living cities, and managing the squares involved many skills.
388 M. Fuster Morell
Differences in technological practice might explain why the start of the 15M was not
significantly connected to previous social movements, but they subsequently converged.
The GJM was also innovative in using ICTs for social mobilization, using websites, Short
Message Service (SMS) messaging, email distribution lists and Indymedia. Even so, the
groups and activists that came from a GJM background were of the technological
generation of the early 2000s and were unfamiliar with social networks such as Twitter
and Facebook, which became popular in Spain only much later and were opposed by many
activists because of their corporate character (Interview, Enric Duran, 15 May 2011).
A further important synergy lies in the diffusion of the movement message online
(info-actions) from home. The ‘info-action’ was particularly important for feeding the
informational ecosystem of the 15M and maintaining connections with a network of
solidarity locations in other countries to amplify and internationalize the protest
(Interview, member of occupied social center, 23 May 2011; Interview, member RDN,
17 September 2011). This informational ecosystem of conversational flows was created by
the connection of mutually interacting applications and spaces.
As the mobilization processes converged within the 15M, the movement also activated
previous generations who had struggled for political and social freedoms, such as
grandparents who had fought during the dictatorship and who felt sympathy for the spirit of
the squares, and showed solidarity with their oppression. Indeed, the 15M movement
enjoyed wide support among the citizenry; according to a Metroscopia survey of June 2011,
the majority of Spanish people (84%) believed that the movement tackled problems that
directly affected the citizens and had good reasons to mobilize. Spain has a youth
unemployment rate of approximately 45% and problematic access to housing. Those
precarious living conditions could help explain the understanding and level of support the
protest received.
In short, the 15M engaged a multi-dimensional synergy: a new generation of citizens
converged with the housing movement and the FCM to create a common framework for
articulating actions through social networks and changed the scene by generating the fire
to demonstrate. However, to this first composition was added, primarily in the squares, the
networks and skills from previous social movements (such as education, health and
alternative consumption, among others) as well as a connection to previous generations—
together generating a virtuous cycle that obtained large social support and engagement
(online and off-line) for the mobilizations.
The FCM in the Genealogy of the 15M
The FCM interacted and contributed to the genealogy of the 15M in various ways—with
composition, agenda, frame and organizational logic the most significant.
Composition
The FCM was one of the movements that mobilized for the 15M demonstration.
Individuals and two of the initial groups (Anonymous and Do Not Vote for Them) that
formed the platform to organize the initial demonstration were directly connected to free
culture struggles. The FCM also contributed in providing the main physical spaces—in
centers connected to free culture practices before the occupation of the squares—to
celebrate the organizational meetings.
The Free Culture and 15M Movements 389
Agenda
The FCM contributed to the agenda of the 15M through developing an information and
knowledge policy that favors public domain and access. Even so, the documentation on the
15M shows a reduced presence of subjects tied to new technologies and intellectual
property. The FCM also contributed to the 15M agenda through the development of the
concept of the digital commons (Fuster Morell & Subirats, 2012), and thus the wider
connection with the commons as political tradition, strategy and organizational format.
Frame Creation
The 15M changed the terms of opposition to the political and economic system, moving
from contemporary thematic movements (such as ecological or feminist) to a more
general, meta-political frame confrontation.
The creation of a general ‘meta-politics’ frame dates from 2007. Law professor Lawrence
Lessig, a key advocate of Creative Commons licenses (an alternative to Copyright that
favors use and accessibility), announced that he would stop working on free culture and
cyberlaw. The reason that he gave up was that he had reached the conclusion that promoting
free culture and its democratic values through promoting free culture practices as such had
arrived at a specific endpoint. In his view, therefore, to advance it, it was necessary to face
institutional corruption and to directly engage in political system reform; the political
system, according to Lessig, is structurally corrupt, and therefore prevents any possibility
of change in the institutional and administrative framework (Lessig, personal blog,
June 2007).
In the Spanish case, we can also trace a mutation in the FCM actors already mobilized by
the free culture agenda, but who jump in at a specific point, aiming to change the political
system. One of these mutations could be seen in the mobilizations against the Sinde Law of
December 2010 on Internet regulation. A strong movement of opposition was generated,
and actions against the law were developed over the Internet. The publication on Facebook
of the ‘Manifesto of defense of fundamental rights’ against the Sinde Law generated
more than 240,000 responses in under 24 h. Expressions of rejection achieved a large
presence on Twitter, too. The hashtags (keywords to identify conversations in Twitter)
#leysinde or #sindegate became a trending topic. Distributed Denial of Service attacks
(or cyberattacks), generated large information flows from multiple connection points to
block the webpages of the conservative Popular Party (PP), the Socialist Party (PSOE), the
Catalan Nationalist Party (CIU) and of the lower house of Parliament (Congress of
Deputies), who had voted for the Sinde Law, which was finally approved in mid-February
2011. FCM activists countered with the Do Not Vote for Them campaign (in Spanish,
‘Nolesvotes’), denouncing the corruption of the political system, and targeted to influence
the municipal elections of 22 May 2011. The campaign consisted of a shared manifesto
that asked electors not to vote for political parties that had approved the Sinde Law. In sum,
the approval of the Sinde Law prompted part of the FCM to reconsider their campaign
focus and to redirect their activities (previously centered on free culture issues) to address
the political system as a whole for RDN (Interviews with FCM members, 10 June and
13 July 2011). After 15M, other concerned networks also converged with this meta-politics
frame.
390 M. Fuster Morell
Organizational Logic
Last but not least, another source of FCM influence on the 15M is the modality of its
extensive use of ICTs and its organizational logic in general.
The formats of the Sinde Law campaign and the Nolesvotes campaign were a reference
point for designing the 15M as a campaign with a swarming modality (Interviews, member
FCM, 10 August 2011, and member RDN, 17 September 2011). These campaigns were
not based on creating a platform of representative organizations but on creating a common
pool, which any person or organization who felt attached to the campaign could easily
join. Similarly to Wikipedia, which prohibits group participation, individual participation
is also the characteristic of FCM campaigns. Furthermore, participation is organized so
that it accommodates the various types and degrees of resource availability and interest in
contributing (Fuster Morell, 2010). It is also highly dependent on the digital arena. Here,
the informational ecosystem is central to the movement’s communicative strategy for
occupying the public space, not only through the mass media but also by attempting to
become a trending topic on Twitter, reducing dependence on intermediaries or traditional
media actors. Although the 15M has significantly more face-to-face activity than typically
occurs in the FCM, the decentralized meta-coordination of the mobilization through the
Internet informational ecosystem plays a key role in both movements.
Conclusions
In some respects, the FCM is a predecessor of the 15M mobilization; our analysis reveals a
series of channels by which the FCM contributed to the genealogy of 15M. These
contributions include composition (providing a mobilization trajectory and resources that
fed the 15M), agenda (incorporating questions in the 15M agenda relating to an
information and knowledge policy favoring public domain and access, and, more
importantly, the commons political tradition and strategy), frame (reinforcing the necessity
of framing the passage from thematic-specific to meta-politics) and organizational logic.
In this last respect, as with its predecessor the FCM, the 15M generated an online
informational ecosystem, which played an important role in meta-coordinating the
mobilization, and in communicating and intervening in the public debate. In this regard,
the 15M movement has not only become the latest exponent of a mobilization format
arranged principally through the Internet but also managed to overcome the FCM’s
limitations to online settings, and generated large face-to-face mobilizations. Our analysis
of the 15M composition further reveals that its ecosystem character is not limited to
meta-coordination and communication of information in online settings only, as it mirrors
an informational ecosystem characterized by a complex system of diverse components,
interactions and synergies.
The 15M system of layers includes a new generation of mobilized citizens, who, with
the juxtaposition of the housing movement and FCM, created the first surprising start.
Following the occupation of public squares, the movement negotiated a convergence of
anti-austerity mobilizations, the student movement, the occupation of social centers and
alternative practices resulting from the previous wave of the GJM. Finally, info-actions by
networked individuals from home helped sustain an international solidarity network, and
secure the support and solidarity of previous generations who had fought for political
freedom in the transition to democracy, as well as the strong support of much of the
The Free Culture and 15M Movements 391
population over precarious living conditions. The set of interactions and synergies of these
components combined to generate a virtuous cycle that obtained large social support and
engagement (online and off-line) for the mobilizations.
References
della Porta, D. & Mosca, L. (2005) Global-net for global movements?, Journal of Public Policy, 25, pp. 165 –190.
Fuster Morell, M. (2010) The governance of online creation communities, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation,
European University Institute, Florence.
Fuster Morell, M. & Subirats, J. (2012) Towards a New Policy Making? Cases the Free Culture Movement and
the Digital Commons and 15M in Catalonia. Research Report. IGOP-UAB for EAPC.
Haro, C. (2010) Political Activism in the Network Society: The Case of Housing Movement (Murcia:
Congreso AECPA).
Lessig, L. (2004) Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control
Creativity (New York: Penguin Press).
Ubasart, G., Ra
`fols, R. & Vivas, E. (2009) Barcelona for the Community Action: Networks of Solidarity Exchange
in Barcelona City (Barcelona: Ajustament de Barcelona).
Mayo Fuster Morell is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet
and Society at Harvard University, and member of the Institute of Government and Public
Policy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She recently concluded her Ph.D.
dissertation (Governance of online creation communities. Provision of infrastructure for
the building of digital commons) at the European University Institute, Florence.
392 M. Fuster Morell
