Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2011, on 20-21 May 2011, the day before Spain’s regional and municipal elections; its predictions about the movement spreading worldwide and entering the history books belong to that moment.
The media are starting to do their job and are no longer distorting the reason for this #Spanishrevolution (not all of them, unfortunately, but enough, thank God). «This is no longer a game, and our young people are tired. They have lost faith in the political class.»
Some internationally renowned sociologists say that what began with the uprisings in Egypt and Libya to overthrow a regime (even though that is not the case here) has used Spain as a bridge to spread across Europe with the same message: «We need real democracy now.» They say that if it carries on this way, the movement will soon spread around the world because, as we said in our previous article, «if a country has a politician and a banking system, it has lived through recent corruption».
Other sociologists saw it coming and had even warned about it after a survey carried out a few years ago, in which, after the crisis and the economy, the next problem worrying Spaniards was the political class, regardless of which party was in government.
They accuse politicians of provoking this movement: once they knew they were part of society’s problem, they never did anything to «quiet society down» by trying to find out what was bothering citizens.
They praise the fact that, although this is a mass protest with no trade union behind it, there have been none of the violent incidents seen in Greece and some other countries, where protesters didn’t hesitate to set fire to government buildings and ransack them. They have described this movement as one of the most dignified and well-mannered in history.
And finally, they have no doubt that this movement will bring about a change in society that will be recorded in the history books, just like May 1968.
Just as I saw a few things that could be improved back then, today all I can say is that it should carry on just as it has today, Saturday 21 May. Congratulations, and on to the #Worldrevolution.
Featured image: Enrique Dans, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
