Rubén Díez García: The new protest camp in Madrid is not the same as 15M – it is its evolution

Housing has always been at the forefront of political concerns in Spain post-2008, but whereas the 15-M movement was more broadly about the legitimacy of the political and economic system, the demands of the current protests are more narrowly focused on the housing crisis.

Rubén Díez García is associate professor at Complutense University of Madrid.

Cross-posted from The Conversation

Picture by Zarateman

Is there any parallel between the protest camp that arose spontaneously last Saturday in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, where the headquarters of the Government of the Community of Madrid is located, to protest the housing crisis after the eviction of MariCarmen, and the 15M movements ?

At the fly, I took a look at the number of evictions that took place in 2011. It was the year in which ‘Juventud Sin Futuro’, in April, and ‘Democracia Real Ya’, in May, organized the demonstrations that led to the camps of the indignant of the 15M in Madrid and other cities of the country. That year, more than 75,000 foreclosures and 55,000 eviction files (releases) were exceeded. Record numbers that reached peaks above 90,000 foreclosures in 2012 and 68,000 releases in 2014. These were the toughest moments after the financial crisis that eroted in 2008.

In 2025, there were fewer than 18,000 executions and 25,000 launches , marking minimums in the time series of the General Council of the Judiciary. In 2013 and 2014, the bulk of the launches were directly linked to mortgage loan executions. However, from 2017, the year in which the Tenants’ Union was created, the statistics pointed to a new reality. In the latest data for 2025, 3 out of 4 evictions were due to non-payment of rental fees , derived from the Urban Lease Law. A very different Spain.

In 2011, the main problems faced by young and not so young people that promoted the mobilization to the cry of “They do not represent us” and “Real Democracy Now” were unemployment, corruption and fraud, economic crisis or political disaffection. Unemployment affected about 1 in 2 people under 25 years of age ; today 1 in 4 years of age affected . That was a political and economic crisis, and we have not come out of the first: rather it has evolved towards a deep crisis of legitimacy.

In any case, the emancipation rate has worsened considerably, from 21.5% in 2011 to 14.5% in 2025 , and the average rental price would have doubled according to data from the Real Estate Portal Idealista . The proportion of young people between 25 and 34 years old with higher education has grown by more than 10 percentage points, exceeding 50%, and the main problems for young people, according to the CIS in June , 2026 are: housing, immigration, the economy and quality of employment. After these four, come the political problems, including the government and the political parties.

A misleading comparison

The comparison of the camping that takes place these days in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and in other Spanish cities with the 15M is as tempting as it is misleading. The images are similar: the square taken, the tents, the assemblies, the slots and the demonstrators willing to endure in their actions. In fact, this camp makes visible what are years of submerged networks and more latent collective action. We are in another historic moment. And it is precisely these networks that connect the inherited frameworks of the evolution of 15M towards the political sphere and institutional policy with 2026.

The camp unleashed by the eviction of MariCarmen has an identifiable actor who coordinates the mobilization and shapes the discourse: the Tenants’ Union. The demands are concrete and, at least initially, there is a defined temporary objective: to put pressure on the Government before the new housing decree. The campers themselves are responsible for emphasizing these issues. But to understand what is happening, it may be more useful to talk about evolution than about similarities or differences.

The 15M was not only a protest against the evictions and the housing problem, but also. Its framework for action was much broader. The economic crisis was mixed with a criticism of political representation, corruption (curiously much more absent today), the functioning of institutions and life opportunities. The slogan “They don’t represent us” condensed much of that indignation. Housing was present, but it was part of a broader diagnosis of how we understand democracy.

The framework of action of 2011 was transformed. A part of the activists, academics and intellectuals who would later promote the creation of the political parties Podemos or Sumar, reinterpreted and chaneled that indignation in a direction of deep criticism towards the institutions that emerged from the process of transition to democracy. But also towards the market economy, in a ruptureist logic, of a more radical and populist cut.

The government led by President Pedro Sánchez has managed to subordinate that framework to its interests for almost two legislatures. Until maybe today. The campers also seem to have him in their sights.

With solution proposals

The current camp is the natural progression, in terms of performance and generational renewal, of that framework of action. There is a clear consensus on the need to solve a problem that shows the seams of our economy and intergenerational inequalities. However, it is the proposed solutions that are at issue in the public debate. On the one hand, the Tenants’ Union, with more short-term, statist and protectionist proposals, today on the media agenda thanks to its strategic capacity for action. On the other hand, measures such as those of think tanks (ideas laboratories) EsadeEcPol and Athena or those of Fedea . Its proposals are committed to a framework of reforms and public-private cooperation within the framework of the market economy and with a medium and long-term perspective.

It is not about establishing a causal line between 15M and the 2026 camp. Nor do we know yet what path this protest will take. But we can see that some of the forms of action that became visible in Sol and took political form fifteen years ago continue to constitute part of the repertoire of the mobilization today.

The interesting thing is that the actors who give them continuity in the streets do so by overflowing (in principle) the parties that capitalized on the indignation in 2011 and have been part of the last two socialist governments. Many of the slots and banners of the camp point to the PP and the discursive frames of the radical right, their black beasts, but also to President Sánchez, the PSOE and Sumar. Maybe this time the children want to devour Saturn, or maybe not.

Another hypothesis would point to what drove many protesters in 2011: claiming recognition due to their accumulation of credentials, social and cultural capital, and even political. Many of the young campers and those who act as spokespersons give the profile, but not all sectors affected by the problem seem to be reflected in the organizational forms, the repertoires of action or the discursive frameworks of the camp. From the outset, these young people are forbidden access to the main good on which social prestige has been rested in the recent history of Spain since Francoist developmentism, housing. The case of Maricarmen is, in a sense, the mirror in which they look.

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