Home eviction, grassroots organizations and citizen empowerment in Spain

Abstract

The Spanish grassroots anti-eviction organization Platform for People Affected by the Mortgage (PAH) illustrates the significance of grassroots organizations in providing responses to the housing crisis. Analyzing the resilient and sophisticated grassroots approaches developed by the PAH despite drastic political opposition, this chapter explores a combination of explanatory factors to scrutinize the achievements of the movement. We argue that the contextual seeds of Barcelona’s grassroots urban movements, the creation of a sophisticated grassroots organizational and territorial structure, the development of a new narrative of housing rights and explanations for the crisis, and the generation of individual empowerment through collective action are key factors to explain the PAH success.