Chapter 10 Echoes of Ricardo Mella: Reading Twenty-First Century Youth Protest Movements through the Lens of an Early Twentieth-Century Anarchist

In: Protests and Generations: Legacies and Emergences in the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean
Author:
Stephen Luis Vilaseca
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This chapter views youth protest movements in Spain through the lens of Spanish anarchist Ricardo Mella’s radical turn-of-the-twentieth-century thought (1861–1925), because an understanding of Mella’s ideas allows one to make better sense of the demands and impact of contemporary Spanish activism. The challenges that Mella confronted—such as the debates over the use of violence, the process of experimentation in decision-making techniques, the value of collectivism and cooperatives, the practice of democracy, and the creation of values other than purely economic ones—are the same problems that Spanish youth protest movements face today. Even though activists do not openly identify with Mella, his response to the internal conflicts raging within classic anarchist theory and practice are relevant because of the clear intersections between his moment of protest and the current generation of youth protests. Revisiting Mella not only sheds light on contemporary resistances to capitalism, but present-day activism also helps us understand the limitation of Mella’s thought. As a way of dialoguing with Mella’s vision, this chapter builds upon recent studies dedicated to the concept of generations, new social movement theory, and anarchism and radical contemporary theory. Various projects are used as case studies, including: 1) the Can Vies squat in Barcelona; 2) the cooperative l’Ateneu Cooperatiu la base, also in Barcelona; 3) Catalan protester Enric Duran’s creative activism; and 4) the recently formed, Spanish grassroots-inspired political parties Citizens’ Network X Party and Podemos.

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