¡Toma la Plaza!: Reading Spain’s 15-M movement through the Ecuadorian experience1

Abstract

The economic downturn of 2008, inseparable from the accelerated privatization of Spain’s public services, led in May of 2011 to the Social Movement popularly known as ‘15-M’. Sol, Madrid’s Central Plaza, became the movements’ main scenario. Participants of the movement, self-identified asindignados(‘outraged’), encouraged answers from a diversity of social perspectives regarding ways of living, moving and thinking the city through discourses of ecology and sustainability. This article reflects on the 15-M movement from the migrant experience in general, but with particular attention to the Ecuadorian context. Through various forms of cultural expression, the 15-M movement should be read from a transnational perspective and from the lived realities of many Spanish residents with ties to the Andean context and to Ecuador’s national space.