Popular protest and collective violence in contemporary urban Spain: from mutiny to new social movements

Abstract

This paper assesses the modalities of popular protest and collective violence in contemporary urban Spain, and their specificities with regard to other European countries. First, we outline a genealogy of the concepts with which historians and contemporary chroniclers analysed these events. then, we explore those motivations for collective mobilizations that seem more closely linked to the urbanization process than to labour issues, and the similarities to what was going on beyond our borders. our conclusions cast serious doubts about those developmental models, which are based on the transition from riots to the labour movement and then to the new social movements.