Feminisms and the 15M Movement in Spain: Between Frames of Recognition and Contexts of Action

The purpose of this profile is to address the Spanish 15M movement from a gender perspective, focusing, on the one hand, on the role played by feminist demands within it and, on the other, on how feminism may have contributed to the 15M, its internal debate and its further developments unfolding in the current Spanish political context. In order to do that, we will first explore how feminist demands were initially received in the camps and the reactions they raised among the media and citizenship. Secondly, we will tackle how this case of overlap between a larger group and feminist groups is different from previous collaborations and confrontations. Finally, we will focus on how the 15M movement has transformed (or not) as a result of feminism and the implications of this process towards rethinking the role of feminism within contemporary Spanish politics.

Three years after the emergence of the 15M movement in Spain, specialized literature and the press have profusely tackled the characteristics of such movement in the particular historical context of Spanish democracy and in the international arena of the 2011 uprisings. However, little has been said of the intersections and challenges between the 15M and the feminist movement in Spain. The purpose of this profile is to analyse what the Spanish 'indignados' movement has meant for Spanish feminisms and what the latter may have signified both to the 15M debate and the further political protests stemming from it in contemporary Spain.. Our ultimate aim is to contribute to the debate on how studies on the 2011 uprisings, such as the 15M movement in Spain, can inform or be informed by feminist movement analysis.

New contexts, old frames
It is widely known that the 15M movement, as well as adopting a non-hierarchical organisational structure and rotating its spokespersons, also shunned any identification with political, trade union or even third sector organisational lines. The movement's efforts were geared towards constructing a political agenda on the basis of advocating for fundamental human rights for every citizen. However, with regard to legitimising feminist demands, the 15M had a troublesome reaction. As different activists express in the multi-authored volume R-evolucionando. Feminismos en el 15M (VVAA, 2012), feminist proposals initially encountered rejection by the people gathering in the assemblies. The feminist committees and work groups in Madrid (Comisión Feminismos Sol, @feminismos_sol), Seville (Setas Feministas, http://setasfeministas.wordpress.com/), Barcelona (Feministes Indignades, http://feministesindignades.blogspot.com.es/), Galicia (Feminismos en #AcampadaObradoiro, @feminismogaliza) and Zaragoza (Feministas Bastardas, feministasbastardas@hotmail.com), among others, coincide in highlighting that during the 15M assemblies they encountered many difficulties to make themselves visible and heard. The different committees had to deal with manifestations of structural violence in the form of lack of representation in committees and assemblies, patronising behaviours (when exposing their arguments) and sexist stereotyping (mainly having to do with women's demands being considered not universal or "personal caprices") (Taibo, 2013).
Also, they suffered some acts of violent sexism and undermining of women's demands (VVAA, 2012: 49 & 61-62). For example, during the camp in May 2011 in the Plaza de Sol in Madrid, two events occurred that symptomatised the frictions between the Feminist Committee and the rest of the movement. The first episode occurred on May 20, 2011, when, after hanging a banner with the slogan 'The revolution will be feminist or no revolution at all', a man tore it down before the effusive clapping of the rest of the people witnessing it. The second event was a reading by the Feminist Committee, in the General Assembly, of a statement announcing that the Committee would no longer spend the night in the camp after having suffered and been informed of 'sexual, sexist and homophobic aggression' (Madrid Sol Committee on Feminisms, 2011: 46) 2 .
The conflictive relation of the feminist groups within their respective camps was enhanced in occasions by the mainstream media by framing women's demands as a source of confrontation. Indeed, in the examples above the Spanish press reacted promptly focusing on the banner incident and the committee's denounce of aggressions but never dedicating space to explaining women's vindications in the camps. Regarding the banner, the press capitalised on the public's reaction which was portrayed in terms of widespread rejection to the hanging 3 .
Moreover, it is noteworthy that, in the blogs of the different newspapers covering the accusations incident, some of the readers' comments questioned the veracity of women's accusations. Many of these comments coalesced a strong rejection, not just to the Feminist Committee (accused of seeking to portray the Sol Camp in a bad light), but to feminism in general, which was accused of pursuing a privilege status of women over men. Feminist activists were labelled through different readers' posts with the derogatory term 'feminazi' and feminism with the term 'hembrismo' ('hembra' is the Spanish word for 'female', so 'hembrismo' would allegedly be the equal opposite of 'machismo'). These impossible coinages were used to define a new feminism that would supposedly benefit from grants and subsidies, and that would only seek privileges over men 4 .
Obviously this is not the first time in the history of social movements that feminist demands are either denied legitimate recognition or framed under the matrix of confrontation. From the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s (civil rights, against Vietnam War, student mobilization...), feminist vindications have been met with reticence and sexist attitudes, in the best of the cases, or violence in the worst scenarios (Eschle, 2001). When women reacted, they were criticised for worrying about personal issues.
With regards to the history of Spanish social movements, the relation of feminism with other movements crystallised during the reconstruction of democracy (after the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975) and, as usual, it has been fraught with complexities. The priority of reconstructing Spanish democracy marked the path to be However, from the 15M uprisings in Spain, feminist groups in the public protests and on the web have emerged as discordant voices activating the Spanish feminist movement as a political subject and contributing to repositioning the very knowledge on social justice defended by the 15M, as we shall see below.

Spanish feminism and 15M: synergies and challenges
Despite the initial problems, feminist activists coincide in pointing out that the 15M supposed an opportunity for the reactivation of the feminist struggle and for getting rid of the stigma that still plagues Spanish feminism (VVAA, 2012: 15). In the squares, radical feminists, socialist feminists, LGTBI activists, union feminists, immigrant women, sex workers, religious women, atheist women, Muslim women, etc., gathered to make visible that feminism was diverse and alliances were needed for this struggle.
The physical space of the squares and assemblies encouraging horizontal participation invited also women, despite difficulties, to occupy public spaces and assume leadership positions within different groups and committees (VVAA, 2012: 49).
Undoubtedly, the work of the feminist groups in the 15M was nourished by the activist legacy of the Spanish feminist movement during the first years of democracy, but also by an infrastructure that came into being in Spain in the nineties: cyberfeminism.
Beyond the mere presence of specialised portals, web 2.0 has provided opportune spaces for relations that favour online feminist praxis, especially through social network sites (Fernández, Corredor y Santín, 2011: 68). The creation of feminist portals and websites has given Spanish feminism practical and theoretical tools through which women located in different contexts can recognize their respective differences and work across ethnic, national and gender limits (Núñez Puente y García Jiménez, 2011: 41). In a neoliberal scenario concerned with making opaque any legacy of resistance stemming from anti-dictatorial protests, the 15M has made possible to recognize the similarities between the struggle of veteran feminists and postmodern ones.
Moreover, thanks to the 15M, the opportunity to create alliances against structural violence has expanded the traditional subject of feminism. The initial tensions with other members of the camps made women realise that they had to give priority to make their vindications understood within the context of the current neoliberal crisis.
Therefore they focused on the links between capitalism and patriarchy. In the face of quotidian precariousness, the materiality of the feminist "the personal is political" was clearer than ever. Oppressions had to be fought not gathering under a gender identity but through the assumption of interlocking oppressions (based on race, class, sexuality, etc.). As activists observe, physically occupying the squares along with citizens from diverse origins and social movements (ecologists, neighbourhood-based, antieviction...) and creating new relations through everyday protest experiences no doubt has facilitated mutual knowledge and the realisation of the interlocking character of oppressions (Marugán, Miranda y Mato, 2013: 24-25).
The question was not, however, one of adding in homosexual politics, politics of gender, anti-racist politics and so forth, but of building together relational policies and strategies of political intersectionality that would challenge the spaces where oppressions coincided. This, in turn, contributed to relax possible tensions inherited form the previous debate within Spanish feminism regarding women's double militancy (VVAA, 2012: 19 & 73).
The "personal is political" is precisely the matrix that articulates the main contribution of Spanish feminism to the 15M movement. It extends not only to emphasising the links between patriarchy and neoliberal policies but also to the everyday work in the camps.
Indeed, women have transformed the 15M spaces by connecting the political struggle to the materiality of their bodies and to the everyday strategies of care they have deployed.
Thus, they have denounced that through their unpaid everyday work they hold back capitalism chops in health, education and social services. But they have also provided, along with other fellow campers, care to support families in precarious situations such as before eviction actions. Therefore, Spanish feminism has transformed the 15M movement by exposing another form of politics where the political subject cannot be understood without recurring to the sharing of vulnerabilities, collective empowerment and care. Collective empowerment is no longer constructed only on a shared identity but by common and concerted action against the violence coming not only from the state or the markets but also inscribed in quotidian social relations.
In sum, through the streets, the squares and the web, the different feminisms reactivated since the 2011 uprisings in Spain have been constituted, through their actions and demands, as ethical and uncomfortable witnesses (Oliver, 2004) whose struggle contribute to reposition the universal social justice claims of the 15M movement and revise the advances on issues of equality made by gender mainstreaming in Spain.

Advancing through tides
As a result of the assumption for the need of alliances and intersectional approaches, This time, the press could no longer reproduce a frame of confrontation: on February 6, women's network. Under the headline 'Marea Violeta contra los ultraconservadores' (Purple tide against ultra-conservatives), it described the birth of the purple tide as a visible network of feminist women's organisations that was supported by non-feminists organisations (Carballar, 2012). On February 10, 2012 Público also published a story with the headline '15M protests against labour reform and equality cuts' in which the purple tide demonstration was combined with that of the 15M, such that feminist demands appeared alongside those of the 15M (Muriel and Giménez, 2012).
The last example of this alliance before the interlocking of oppressions can be found in the demonstration named 'El tren de la libertad' (The Liberty Train) that took place on

Conclusions
Throughout this profile we have addressed the 15M movement from the position of the feminist demands made within it, to offer a nuanced reading of the synergies and challenges that their coming together has brought about in the face of the 2011 protests, the Spanish feminist movement and contemporary politics.
Spanish feminists through the squares and the web have become ethical and, fortunately, uncomfortable witnesses embarked upon the task of focusing on the interlocking of oppressions and bringing to the public space the oppressions suffered in the private sphere. The crisis of patriarchal capitalism, with all the inequalities that it embodies, has provided feminism with the empirical basis to legitimate its fundamental contribution in the face of the quotidian materiality of shared precariousness. Indeed, assuming the collective character of the subject's vulnerability before gender, race, class or any other orientated exclusion, has changed the focus of the struggle, amplified the concept of power and re-signified the political subject. Undoubtedly, the Spanish 2011 uprisings have made possible for feminists to bring at the forefront of the struggle the intersectionality of oppressions. The 15M has, in turn, galvanised feminists' demands beyond past tensions derived from double militancy, has reactivated the feminist struggle and has facilitated the creation of alliances within feminist groups and between those and women of diverse origins.
Post-print version of Social Movement Studies 01/2015; 14(3):1-7. DOI: 10.1080DOI: 10. /14742837.2014 In sum, feminist groups, through their actions in the squares and on the web, have followed the line Butler defends, to transform frameworks of intelligibility through social practices, thereby pressurising the symbolic from the social because: No one body establishes the space of appearance, but this action, this performative exercise happens only 'between' bodies, in a space that constitutes the gap between my own body and another's. In this way, my body does not act alone, when it acts politically. Indeed, the action emerged from the 'between' (Butler, 2011). This being 'between' is at the base of an interstitial Spanish feminist project that, favoured by 15-M, seeks to convey, through alliances, a rhizomatic project with differential but intermingling tides, assuming, nonetheless, that the position of the subject in relation to the discourse (whether political or protest) is always in a state of flight.