Barcelona is the heart of a new global political phenomenon known as “municipalism,” whose activists break the boundaries of traditional party politics and question today’s institutional politics, making the “municipalists” themselves outside of party and institutional political vocabulary.
One of the “municipalists” is Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, a woman whose roots are in the Indignados movement, aimed against the then Spanish austerity measures, a sort of predecessor to the Occupy Wall Street movement, writes New Yorker.
For these activists, entering institutional politics was somewhat of a last resort – “we tried everything. We tried civil disobedience. We tried negotiating with banks. Nothing worked. We have to enter institutions to change the way policies are created,” explains Gala Pin, a former activist, member of an anarchist collective, and activist against evictions.
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Colau is best known for her activism for people displaced after the real estate boom in Barcelona and the 2008 crisis, similar to Marta Cruells, a feminist political scientist and professor, making them typical representatives of municipalists whose ranks are often filled by academics, artists, and journalists.
