How validating disruptive protest reshaped Spain's public debate

The description of the end of a social-liberal consensus in Spain reflects a profound shift in public debate, where the validation of disruptive forms of protest has transformed the political landscape. This dynamic suggests that the centre ground, once a refuge of moderation, has become unviable.

The diagnosis of the end of an era in Spain has ceased to be a prophecy and become a description of the present. That country no longer exists where on Sunday mornings the purple Real Madrid tracksuit came out to wash the car while the **Canal Plus** jingle played. That television ecosystem, with **Robinson**'s English accent before the match and the **Terminator** soundtrack on loop, has been replaced by a far harsher reality. The neighbour who hesitated the day before elections between the **PP** and the **PSOE**, and whose vote decided presidents, is today an endangered species. That easygoing social-liberal world has faded away.

## Validating the unthinkable and the return of the pendulum

The mechanics of this change are not mysterious, they are physics. For decades, the boundaries of what can be said have been shifted by validating things that were once unthinkable. Escrache protests (demonstrations outside politicians' homes) were validated as a kind of democratic syrup. Surrounding the **Congress** building was validated. A minister answering a private citizen from his **Twitter** account with an outburst was validated. Now, when those same tools are used against the very people who promoted them, the defence of democracy is invoked. They moved the window, and now they cannot close it.

The physics is exact. A pendulum swings back on the other side to exactly the height from which it was released. Everything that has been pushed to the left is what will come back from the right. And it will not stop in the centre, which is where some would like it to halt. The warning was already given in **2017**: beware of the pendulum, because the wailing will come later.

## Decomplexification and the generation without nostalgia

It is called decomplexification. It is a phenomenon that **Aparachiqui** and **Jorge S. Miguel** handled skilfully in their book *Extremo Centro*. The dynamic is simple: if you call me a fascist and enjoy playing at pretend civil war, we will play too. And out come lines like "pesetas and ditches" or "too little" when executed victims are mentioned. It is the logic of escalation.

Young people who are twenty years old today were not born into the world of **Canal Plus**. They were born under **ZP**. They were children during the **15M** movement, had their schools shut down by **Elbichito** and were banned from going to the park. For a decade they have been hearing in class that the degradation of their neighbourhood is cosmopolitanism and integration, that driving to see their grandmother is a climate crime and that their father is a suspected abuser. That generation has nothing to be nostalgic about.

## Moderation as a privilege and the future of the window

You cannot ask a **20-year-old** for moderation or restraint. Moderate is the one who has something to lose. Someone with a salary, a house, a mortgage and children in school can afford to be measured. But a kid who has been told to his face that he will never be able to buy a home, that building social housing (VPO) for him is something only fascists want, who pays hundreds of euros for a hovel and who is called a fascist for complaining — you cannot take away that kid's right to be angry.

The generation that watched all this happen while glued to **La Sens** and reading **El País** bears its share of responsibility. It stayed silent about the democratic syrup so as not to seem fascist. It looked the other way when **Arrimadas** was doused in urine at Pride, when pregnant **Villacís** was escrached, or when **Cristina Cifuentes** was surrounded and spat at in front of her son. What exists today, we made ourselves, with our own miseries and antiestéticars. Those young people without restraint are the generation that will pull this country out of the mud, in **Paiporta** and everywhere, and they will do it with a window they did not open, but which they will use.