[Activists who took over Barcelona’s City Hall have made lasting
progressive gains, while also confronting the limits of being in
power.]
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LESSONS FROM BARCELONA’S 8-YEAR EXPERIMENT IN RADICAL GOVERNANCE  
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Mark Engler and Paul Engler
May 9, 2023
Waging Nonviolence
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_ Activists who took over Barcelona’s City Hall have made lasting
progressive gains, while also confronting the limits of being in
power. _

Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau meets with the director of beaches, by
Barcelona.cat (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 

“They want us isolated, but they will find us in common.”

In May 2015, this slogan was the rallying cry of a Spanish movement
that startled its country’s political establishment by propelling
into power Ada Colau, Barcelona’s first female mayor. Colau took
office alongside a winning slate of city councilors who had joined
together in a new formation called Barcelona en Comú, Catalan for
“Barcelona in Common.” Their victory reflected a decision by
activists to move from occupying the town squares to taking over city
halls, and it would have profound consequences for the future of one
of Europe’s most prominent metropolitan areas.

Eight years later, Ada Colau and the Comuns, as they are referred to
locally, face a different political situation. They are no longer
insurgent outsiders launching an improbable challenge to the
region’s traditional parties. Rather, they are leaders who have
spent eight years in office, amassing a record of accomplishment but
also encountering the challenges of governance. Now, they are fighting
for a third term — attempting not only to convince voters that their
mission of creating a “fearless city” should continue, but also to
cobble together alliances with other parties that will allow them to
stay in command of Barcelona’s historic City Hall.

After two terms, the radical experiment in Barcelona has found limits
to the project of bringing social movement energy into the corridors
of institutional power. And yet, it remains an intriguing model of
electoral strategy.

So what can we learn from the successes and shortcomings of Barcelona
en Comú so far? And can the Comuns take their process of democratic
revolt further?

WINNING BACK THE CITY

Barcelona en Comú came out
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a moment of intensive social movement activity that fomented after the
global financial crisis of 2008. In the spring of 2011, more than six
million
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into public spaces
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some 60 towns and cities, joining protests that included a May 15
mobilization in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square. The
demonstration turned into
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28-day occupation and gave name to the “M15” movement. Its
participants, known as the Indignados, or “the outraged
[[link removed]!],” railed against
unemployment, austerity and rampant corruption in government,
rejecting the country’s elite with the call of “no nos
representan,” or “they don’t represent us.” Along with the
“movement of the squares” in Greece, the mobilization shook Europe
and helped to inspire Occupy Wall Street later that year.

Subsequently, activists in Barcelona and other Spanish cities decided
to channel some of the spirit of the protests into efforts to take
over the institutions of local government. “We took the social
networks, we took the streets and we took the squares,” leaders of
Barcelona en Comú would later write
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“However, we found that change was being blocked from above by the
institutions. So… we decided to win back the city.”

The Comuns drew not only from the ethos of M15, but also from
Barcelona’s vibrant network of neighborhood movements
[[link removed]].
Ada Colau, for one, rose to prominence as spokesperson of the Platform
for People Affected by Mortgages, or PAH, a dynamic anti-eviction
group. The PAH formed
[[link removed]] support
groups for people in debt, used nonviolent direct action to stop
residents from being removed from their homes, led delegations to
pressure banks to accept new agreements with mortgage holders, and
worked to transform the country’s housing laws. Shortly after Colau
was photographed being dragged away by riot police during one
particularly visible 2013 protest against a bank that refused to
negotiate with an evicted family, one local newspaper poll showed
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90 percent approval rating for the organization.

Instead of forming a traditional political organization, Colau and
other organizers envisioned Barcelona en Comú as a new structure that
would be open, transparent and participatory. They sought to create a
“confluence” that would bring a new social base into politics and
invite in members who were not previously represented. Calling their
new organization a “platform” rather than a “party,” Barcelona
en Comú did include
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participation of five existing political parties (Procés Constituent,
ICV-EUiA, Podemos, Equo, and the newly formed Guanyem). But they did
not divide up the spoils between them, as would be typical in most
European-style coalition politics. Rather, the Comuns required these
pre-existing groups to join in a wider collective process and to build
a shared identity around a common agenda for transforming the city.

Barcelona en Comú crafted
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electoral program through proposals gleaned from open meetings in
public spaces across the city and ideas from civic organizations. This
was followed by a process of popular debate and collective refinement
that played out over many months. “It is essential to start like
this,” the Comuns argued, “proving that there are other ways of
doing politics — listening, participating, collaborating — from
the very beginning.” The result was an agenda committing newly
elected leaders to a program for change that combined
neighborhood-level demands with a set of broader mandates. Priorities
ranged from combating corruption, guaranteeing social rights and
creating housing security, to subsidizing transportation and energy
costs for those in need. The Comuns vowed to bring an explicitly
feminist lens to city politics, as well as to reign in the runaway
expansion of the tourism industry.

At a time when large numbers of residents were disgusted with “la
casta,” the country’s entrenched class of political and economic
elites, the populist appeal to voters worked. Barcelona en Comú was
able to secure a plurality of seats on the city council in 2015, and
Colau subsequently managed to gain a second term as mayor after
elections in 2019.

Once in government, the Comuns were able to use municipal institutions
to work towards their vision. But they have also seen their
aspirations frequently run up against a variety of unpleasant
realities. They have had to maneuver within a slow-moving political
process while facing the challenges of constant opposition from
political foes, demonization by the mainstream media and lawsuits with
deep-pocketed corporate backers. In other words, Occupied City Hall
proved to be a battleground of its own.

EIGHT YEARS MATTER

Today, the completion of two terms in office invites reflection on
what insights can be drawn from the experience of the Comuns. A first
notable lesson is straightforward: eight years matter.

Barcelona en Comú can point to many examples of how it has made a
significant positive impact over the course of two terms in office. As
only a partial list: Ada Colau’s government increased overall social
spending by 50 percent, including a significant expansion of mental
health services and programs for the homeless. It quadrupled the
budget for social housing and built 2,100 new housing units. It
recovered 150 million euros from big companies by cracking down on tax
fraud. Among other initiatives designed to control the tourism
industry, the administration stood up to intensive lobbying from
business and real estate interests by maintaining a years-long
moratorium on new hotel construction and imposing regulations on
platforms such as Airbnb. They closed upwards of 7,500 illegal tourist
flats and, by some estimates, prevented the creation of tens of
thousands more.

As scholars Erik Forman
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Outryve
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in _Dissent_ in 2020, “They set up a sustainable public energy
company, a publicly owned dental clinic that offers affordable rates
and the city’s first municipal LGBTQ center. The city created coop
businesses for migrants and refugees and is attempting to use city
procurement to source from cooperatives. More recently, they enacted a
measure requiring that 30 percent of new buildings be used for
affordable housing and created an anti-eviction unit.” Colau’s
administration also declared Barcelona a “city of refuge,”
expanding municipal services to refugees, asserting a local role in
asylum policy and fostering a network of European cities that are
welcoming of migrants — a set of actions that clashed with national
policies set in Madrid.

Finally, Barcelona has been a leader
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pushing cities toward greater sustainability. The city declared a
climate emergency in 2020 and committed
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$600 million towards slashing carbon emissions. Barcelona’s
103-point climate plan includes the dramatic bolstering of bike lanes,
restrictions on polluting vehicles, expanding urban gardens,
installation of public solar panels and incorporating sustainability
standards into public contracts.

The mayor has been willing to polarize the public around the drive to
push cars out of the city. The city’s flagship “Superblock”
program aims, in Colau’s words, “to recover one million square
meters of public space for popular use” by merging multiple city
blocks into pedestrian havens. Environmental writer David Roberts
has characterized
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as a plan for green urban design “bigger and more ambitious … than
anything being discussed in America.” The Superblocks, he wrote,
constitute “a vision for a different way of living in the 21st
century, one that steps back from many of the mistakes of the
auto-besotted 20th century, refocusing on health and community.”

Strangely, despite all of these accomplishments, the Comuns have found
themselves more isolated than when they started.

One thing that was exciting about Barcelona en Comú’s dramatic
appearance in 2015 is that the group did not emerge alone. Rather, it
self-consciously situated itself as part of something larger.
Domestically, Barcelona was only one of many leftist drives to capture
city government in Spain. A variety of like-minded “municipalist”
platforms won office in cities across the country, including A
Coruña, Cadíz, Valencia, Zaragoza, and — most prominently —
Madrid. Internationally, the Comuns launched a network called
“Fearless Cities” to connect with progressive governments in
cities from Rosario, Argentina to Bologna, Italy, as well as upstart
coalitions still vying for power.

“From the very beginning, those of us who participated in Barcelona
en Comú were sure that the democratic rebellion in Barcelona
wouldn’t be just a local phenomenon,” the platform’s
leaders wrote
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“We want Barcelona to be the trigger for a citizen revolution in
Catalonia, Spain, Southern Europe and beyond.”

However, in elections in 2019, the wave that gave rise to municipalist
hopes across Spain abruptly crashed ashore. In many Spanish cities,
progressives were ousted by more conservative opponents; in other
cases, activist “confluences” fractured
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were replaced by more traditional party politicking. “The right won
in Madrid,” explained David Cid, a member of the Catalonian
parliament who has been part of the Comuns. Since then, “they have
been undoing all the work” of the left, he said. “To really
consolidate your model of the city, you can’t change things in four
years. You can change a city in eight or 12 years.”

Holding an initial plurality of only 11 of 41 seats on the city
council, Barcelona en Comú always relied on the support of other
parties to move its initiatives forward. As the establishment media
launched relentless attacks on Colau and her colleagues, business
interests deployed legal challenges to many progressive measures —
blocking, in one instance, efforts to “re-municipalize”
Barcelona’s privatized water supplier. The platform’s councilors
quickly felt the limits of their power. “Just trying to implement
your manifesto when you need the vote of opposition parties to do it
means that, inevitably, you’re not going to be able to do everything
you wanted to do,” said Kate Shea Baird, who served on the Executive
Committee of Barcelona en Comú, in a 2018 interview
[[link removed]] in
the_ Ecologist_.

“You get into City Hall, even a relatively powerful City Hall like
Barcelona, and you realize that not all of the power is there,” she
continued. “Airbnb has a lot of power. The Catalan government has a
lot of power. The Spanish government has a lot of power. The media has
a lot of power. Winning the election is the first step to getting
anything done.”

Echoing this sentiment, Álvaro Porro, an activist who has become the
city’s Commissioner for Social Economy, Local Development and Food
Policy, quipped: “We’re the most ambitious government in the
history of Barcelona, with the least power in the history of
Barcelona.”

During Colau’s first term, the issue of Catalan nationalism exploded
into headlines, with large-scale protests for independence meeting
staunch repression from the national government. In response, the
mayor tried to walk a fine line, supporting the rights of
demonstrators but opposing separatist demands — a position that
invited criticism from all sides.

In the 2019 elections, Barcelona en Comú, vying for another term in
power, came in second place and lost one of its council seats. Colau
was able to retain control of City Hall only by securing the backing
of the centrist Socialist party as well as that of more conservative
councilors who wanted to block pro-independence forces. Reliance on
such dealmaking limited the ability of the Comuns to maneuver
aggressively, and it also dampened the enthusiasm of its base.
Combined with the COVID pandemic, these developments served to slow
progress during Colau’s second term.

In advance of the upcoming elections in late May, other parties are
actively calculating the leverage they might enjoy by shifting to
other alliances. Given these circumstances, whether the Comuns can
turn eight years of change into 12 remains to be seen.

CHANGING THE CULTURE OF INSTITUTIONAL POLITICS IS HARD

A second important lesson learned after two terms in office is that,
while controlling the levers of city power can allow for real gains,
changing the culture of institutional politics is another challenge
entirely.

From its inception, Barcelona en Comú sought to approach the
electoral realm differently than traditional parties. “A citizen
platform doesn’t just aim to change local policies,” its
leaders wrote
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“It also aims to change the rules of the game and create new ways of
doing politics.” This ambition created excitement, but it also
generated high expectations and opened space for disillusionment with
changes that felt less than revolutionary.

As one means of setting itself apart, Barcelona en Comú sought to
avoid creating cults of personality around celebrity politicians,
favoring instead a social movement model of leaderful participation.
However, Ada Colau’s charisma and public appeal have loomed large.
This could be seen in the process that brought the Comuns together. In
terms of its structure, the platform wanted
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reach beyond established political cadres and avoid becoming “a
coalition or an alphabet soup of party acronyms.” For the
traditional left parties that signed on, agreeing to join such a
structure was a sacrifice. After all, their top representatives were
not guaranteed priority spots on a “list” of candidates and their
political priorities would be subject to review by assemblies of
activists.

Yet the reason the small parties in Barcelona were more willing to
merge individual identities into a common project than in, say,
Madrid, was due to the obvious benefit of being associated with Colau.
“Without Ada Colau, who is a completely amazing politician, this
process would not be so successful,” argued Mauro Castro, a
political scientist who has a background working in Barcelona’s
autonomous social movements and is a member of La Hidra Cooperative, a
think tank and public education initiative. “To be honest, she’s
just a machine. She’s very good at keeping everybody aligned.”

Another way in which Barcelona en Comú attempted to distinguish its
candidates from mainstream politicians was by having them sign on to a
strict code of ethics. This was designed to curtail the privileges
associated with professional politicians and lessen the distance
between the city’s political leaders and ordinary residents.
Borrowing a slogan from the Mexican Zapatistas, the Comuns dubbed
their approach “Governing by Obeying.” The code involved limiting
elected officials to two consecutive terms in office, doing away with
perks such as official cars and paid expenses, and consenting to high
standards of transparency. Moreover, Barcelona en Comú’s councilors
— up to and including Colau — agreed to voluntarily cap their
income at three times the minimum wage, initially 2,200 euros (or
around $2,500) per month. They have donated the remainder of their
official salaries to social movement groups.

Although some other left parties in Spain such as Podemos also follow
a similar protocol, it goes without saying that such a practice
appears quite extraordinary by U.S. political standards — at least
for politicians who are not independently wealthy and actually rely on
their government paychecks to live. It also marked a sharp break from
precedent in Barcelona: the _Guardian _reported
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2016 that while Colau’s effective take-home pay came to well under
30,000 euros during her first year in office, her predecessor Xavier
Trias had regularly pocketed
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euros annually in salary and expenses.

The code of ethics has made a lasting impact on the city’s political
culture, and it reflects a moment when public outrage at political
corruption ran high. Over time, however, the Comuns have moved to
relax some standards — particularly their commitment to strict term
limits. In 2022, Barcelona en Comú members voted to approve
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Colau and other senior councilors running once again for reelection.

Another example of how established norms have proven difficult to
shake relates to what Colau and other Spanish leftists have called the
“feminization of politics.” Central in the formation of Barcelona
en Comú was the idea of bringing an overtly feminist perspective to
organizing and governance. For Colau, such politics includes
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culture of listening and empathy, calling on politicians to “lower
the levels of testosterone” in their combative posturing,
recognizing the importance of care work, setting up structures that
allow for a balance between the personal and the professional. It also
means validating the idea that, in the mayor’s words
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“politics done collectively are better than those done
individualistically.”

This perspective translated into policy. By 2021, the City Council’s
website could cite
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to “incorporate the gender perspective in every area of politics and
society so as to combat the more structural aspects of gender
inequality and sexism and overcome the situations of discrimination
that still persist in a patriarchal society such as ours.” Among
other measures, Colau’s government created
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Councilor’s Office for Feminism and LGBTI Affairs, created
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municipal child care program Concilia to support work-life
balance, halted
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on sex workers, launched the “Anti-Sexist Barcelona” program to
combat sexual violence, incorporated gender-based criteria into city
planning and design, and established
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Activa, an employment program for women.

_Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia, an editorial board
member at Dissent, and co-author of "This Is An Uprising: How
Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century" (Nation Books).
He can be reached via the website www.DemocracyUprising.com
[[link removed]]._

_Paul Engler is the director of the Center for the Working Poor in Los
Angeles, and a co-founder of the Momentum Training
[[link removed]], and co-author, with Mark Engler,
of "This Is An Uprising [[link removed]]."_

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