15M II launch fizzles: 20 tents and few attendees at Sol

15M II launch fizzles: 20 tents and few attendees at Sol

How many people are really in Madrid's Puerta del Sol? The numbers from TV cameras and street-level observations do not match. What was presented as a new wave of indignation against the housing crisis appears to be, according to those present, a dozen very spaced-out tents, some empty, and lower attendance than the short shots suggest. Most attendees, they claim, were mere onlookers drawn by the event, not convinced activists.

This diagnosis repeats across different parts of the conversation: there is no critical mass. Compared to the 2011 15M, this reprint attempt arrives without the human volume that made it unstoppable. And without people, the narrative is sustained only by television production.

How many tents are in the Sol encampment?

The figure cited is no more than 20 tents, distributed with spaces between them and several without occupants. This layout, they point out, seeks to appear more crowded than it is. The comparison with the original 15M is inevitable and comes up short: there was a dense and continuous camp; here, a stage set.

The argument is reinforced by a material detail: the tents are all identical to each other, fueling suspicion of coordinated supply rather than spontaneity. The hovering question is who paid for the materials and why.

Is it a smokescreen to cover other issues?

Part of the analysis argues that the timing is not casual. The encampment coincides with the news of Ceuta and other open fronts, and would serve to shift the media focus. The thesis relies on the coincidence of agendas rather than evidence, and it should be treated as what it is: a hypothesis of intent.

Another current points to a problem of political direction. If the culprit for the housing crisis is the Government and its Housing Act, the protest should be directed at Moncloa or the relevant ministry, not Puerta del Sol. Protesting against the Executive from Madrid's kilometer zero has a diffuse logic.

Housing: build or intervene in the market

The economic core of the matter appears early. One view argues that housing crises have historically been resolved by building: freeing up land and building subsidized housing on a large scale. From there, they criticize the lack of a relevant voice on the left asking for more subsidized housing (VPO), and speak of a synchronized opinion mechanism that avoids this terrain.

On the other hand, the reading is that the problem is about prices and rents, not bricks. The subsidized housing stock has shrunk and demand is pushing prices up. The result, in any case, is the same: rents that drive young people out of cities.

Who is behind the tenants' union?

The composition of the organizers raises doubts. It is pointed out that the Students' Union has an average age far from student-like, and that the Socialist Youth Coordinator defends positions on migration that distance it from the bulk of the electorate. Hence the conclusion that the failure is foretold.

There is also the paradox that a left-wing government is the target of the protest while demanding the application of a 1950s law that the PSOE itself repealed in the 1990s. The joke tells itself, they say.

The eviction, the rain, and the announced end

The police operation enters the equation. It is alleged that the Government Delegation in Madrid did not dissolve the occupation because it considered it peaceful, and that the decision was left to the City Council. Police unions immediately denied this and called the eviction illegal.

The weather factor did the rest. With the arrival of rain and cold, the majority forecast was a stampede. Revolutions, they joke, are getting shorter: four days of encampment and then home. The question now is how many tents are still standing.

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With these threads, 15M II does not seem destined to repeat the course of the original. It lacks people, it lacks narrative, and it has too much choreography.