This thesis is concerned with the social mobilisation in Spain provoked by the financial crisis which started in 2008. Specifically, the thesis analyses the intersections of the housing movement with some political coalitions that won many municipalities in 2015. It does so to explain the dynamics that lead to the creation of a “space of activism” capable of opposing the capitalist organisation of space. Since the beginning of the crisis thousands of Spanish people have lost their homes because they were unable to pay their mortgages. The debt that these people have contracted for covering their housing needs has become such an unbearable burden that many see protest as the only way to avoid being thrown onto the streets. The consequent mobilisation has been canalised mainly through the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages (PAH). Created in Barcelona, this organisation has expanded all over the country, not due to a centralised strategy directed from Barcelona, but to a “contagious” shooting up of chapters that provokes a strong independence among the chapters and a focus on local mobilisation. Despite being able to stop evictions and to force the renegotiation of individual mortgages, PAH has failed to force legal or systemic changes. These difficulties animated many activists to promote the creation of multiple coalitions with diverse political organisations to run for the 2015 local elections. In interrogating what the dynamics that shape this mobilisation are and examining the transition between the movements, this thesis focuses on two definitory characteristics of these organisations. The first one is their high degrees of heterogeneity. This heterogeneity became evident in PAH due to the coexistence of different social classes, nationalities, perceptions or values. Whereas in the municipal platforms, the heterogeneity was mainly linked to the coalition of multiple political groups with diverse ideologies. The thesis explores the role and the influence of this heterogeneity, and the way the different groups handle it. The second definitory characteristic is the high levels of decentralisation and localism that mark the activism of these organisations. That said, the groups are not totally disconnected from each other and their localism is accompanied by certain forms of integration that raise questions about how these connections take place and articulate the different local struggles. In reflecting about these definitory characteristics, the thesis investigates the relation between heterogeneity and the production of space, as well as its relation to the development of certain forms of agency. The fieldwork was based on ethnocartographic research in two local chapters of PAH (PAH Barcelona and Stop Desahucios Coruña) and two municipal coalitions (Barcelona en Comú and Marea Atlántica) in order to research groups of different sizes, visibility and in different contexts. Ethnocartographic methods aim to map the affective relations between the activists that shape certain dynamics that influence the way the activism develops. To advance in this direction, the thesis excavates the possibility of combining Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisation of politics with that of Lefebvre’s theory concerning the production of space. Grounded in their common interest in relationality, everyday life and heterogeneity, the theoretical framework explores the potential of this combination to analyse the connections between the general dynamics that shape activism and the redefinition of agency so as to contest neoliberal urbanism. The analysis excavates how the contention developed by these local groups produces specific forms of space and the potential of these to become spaces of everyday life that confront capitalist representations which organise space. By focusing on this production of space, the thesis addresses the role of heterogeneity in those dynamics and the changes in the agency of the activists. The research reveals the importance of space as the product of the confrontation between the capitalist attempts to organise space and its resistances by the users. The activism, especially that of PAH, has implemented a change in the affective relationships of those subjected to debt. These people transform their passive subjection to the constraints imposed by a spatial organisation around debt into an active agency that mobilises an affective capability to challenge that indebtedness. The coming together of heterogeneous groups of people and their perceptions proved to be the key for this mobilisation, this is especially so concerning the central role of certain activists that incorporate their antagonist perceptions in those affective relations. Nevertheless, the cases demonstrated how, to challenge indebtedness and capitalist imposition, the heterogeneity has not only to be exposed and articulated, but also assembled. When the different perceptions are assembled new representations emerge. These favour the development of new perceptions that confront individual subjectification. The thesis argues that these new representations of everyday life do not develop a full confrontation of capitalist representations. They need the creation of other spaces to avoid jeopardising the cohesion of heterogeneity. It is in these terms that the coalitions must be understood. These coalitions fully develop the abstraction of demands hinted by the representations developed by PAH, by completing a transition from the performative politics that were predominant in PAH to the representational politics that become dominant in the coalitions. The thesis argues that the way in which this transition is made, by avoiding dynamics of rescaling, has favoured the cohesion of the groups, reduced the tensions linked to dynamics of abstraction and generated a “space of activism” based on horizontality that poses a considerable challenge for capitalism to reimpose subjection.

This paper seeks to analyse how the defence and expansion of housing rights can be mobilised to become a main topic for contention. For doing that, the article analyses how social mobilisation around housing has widely expanded in Spain since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008, mainly canalised by the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages (PAH), which have achieved high relevance in mobilising people and influencing the political agenda. Consequently, the organisation has gathered lots of attention from many scholars who have intensively researched how PAH has developed the resistance to housing commodification. Recognising the value of these works, I consider nevertheless that they overestimate the levels of antagonism of PAH, mainly because they are based on fieldwork conducted in important chapters of the organisation which are in the vanguard of the movement. As relevant as these works are to unfold the dynamics in these nodes, the strong decentralisation recommends to question the generalisation of that vision to the whole organisation, something that has been confirmed by my own fieldwork in a small node of the organisation (Stop Desahucios Coruña). This makes necessary to revise the homogeneous visions of the dynamics within the organisation and to rethink how, if the different nodes show so diverse perceptions, the organisation still manages to be so strong and relevant. The article argues that it is necessary to look at spatio-temporal circumstances, which pose constraints and opportunities for activism. To understand how the organisation responds to the spatio-temporal variable, it is important to look at the different articulations of discourse, identity and repertoire of collective action, which form assemblages in the terms defined by Deleuze and Guattari which can even seem to contradict each other. Thus, these different assemblages are a consequence of the ephemeral and contingent relations between these three aspects, confronting the uniformed visions of PAH’s mobilisation. Therefore, while in some cases this assemblage produces a more antagonist result (that can be the case of the oldest PAHs), in other cases the antagonism can be less relevant or even absent, like it happens in the case of Stop Desahucios Coruña. Furthermore, there exists also temporal differences which influence the assemblages even within a node, being fundamental the changes in time of the roles played by activists and affected people. The analysis concludes that the success of the organisation is sustained in an extreme flexibility and openness to adapt to the different assemblages produced by the spatio-temporal contexts, whereas the refusal to rescale the mobilisation further than the local scale avoids exposing possible contradictions of such a flexible framing. Finally, I consider this experience important to show not only the potential of housing issues to articulate social mobilisation, but also to present innovative strategies for other movements contesting neoliberal housing commodification.

The ‘right to the city’ has gained momentum in the last few years as an attractive proposal to contest neoliberal urbanism. The conceptualization created by Henri Lefebvre (1991) as a revolutionary project beyond capitalism and the state to overcome the alienation produced by the capitalist city, poses some interesting questions about the real possibilities of its implementation today, especially considering that initial rejection of state intervention. Thus this chapter investigates the potential for promoting this right from state institutions to advance towards a full revolutionary right to the city, as well as the main challenges and consequences of such efforts in the neoliberal city. To fulfil this aim, the analysis focuses on the attempts of institutionalization tried in Spain within the wave of protest started by the 15M movement, specifically the government action of Barcelona en Comú and Marea Atlántica, two civic coalitions that won the mayoralties of Barcelona and A Coruña in May 2015. The chapter begins with describing the concept of the right to the city in Lefebvre, paying special attention to the four main intertwined features that he considers key for guaranteeing the use value defended by the right to the city over the exchange value promoted by capitalism: centrality, participation, appropriation and encounters. Subsequently this theoretical framework is used to analyze how the government action of the mentioned platforms promote these four aspects, concluding that the main constraints are posed by the legal framework and the politics of scale. Furthermore the analysis shows that the origin of these challenges and limitations are to be found in a persistent tension provoked by the process of institutionalization between two competitive sources of legitimacy ¬¬– liberal representative vs direct radical democracy – which makes it necessary to reformulate the question from asking about the mere institutionalization of the right to the possibilities of inserting it within a representative regime. Thus, the cases show how this tension affects the social movements but, more interestingly, how they also create internal contradictions within the regime, proving the potential benefits of the institutionalization to open opportunities for implementing the radical reform of the right to the city by weakening the regime’s legitimacy and stability. At the same time the institutionalization has spread and normalized the demands linked to the right, increasing their challenge to the hegemonic position of the neoliberal discourse to advance towards a full revolutionary right to the city. Unlike the most common discussions about the topic – that is, conceptual-normative or about its role in social mobilization – this chapter directly addresses the important question of the potential and limitations of the implementation of measures advancing towards the right to the city for the creation of alternatives to current urban development and politics. Moreover the innovative practical experience of the Spanish case has generated hope for political movements all over Europe, which can make use of these lessons for future processes to advance in the construction of alternative urban environments.

I tretton kapitel utmanas rådande problemformuleringar om vad som utgör hindren för att skapa en mer tillgänglig bostadsmarknad och rimligare boendesituation åt alla. Är ökad marknadsekonomi lösningen på bostadsbristen? Måste vi sänka kvalitetskraven för att alla ska få tak över huvudet? Hur hänger bostadsfrågan och frågan om integration och segregation ihop? Är gentrifiering en naturlig förändring av staden? Rådande "sanningar" om fler avregleringar, lägre skatter och ökad marknadsfrihet har kommit att stå i vägen för nytänkande. Det behövs fler röster i debatten. 13 myter om bostadsfrågan ger alternativa tolkningar som kan föra in nya perspektiv på bostadskrisen. Boken ges ut av Förlag Dokument Press, med illustrationer av Sara Granér.