Anarchism in Madrid

: concepts and conceptualisation

Abstract

This dissertation is about anarchism, anarchists and radical politics in Madrid, Spain. It offers an ethnographic overview of some of the ways in which everyday practice for some of Madrid’s politically active population expresses, and is informed by, their engagement with political ideology. Fieldwork research was carried out for this project over the course of one year, from September 2022 to September 2023.

Anarchism’s political and cultural relevance in Spain has ebbed and flowed throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. In recent decades, crises including the 2008 economic crash, the rise of populism and the Covid-19 pandemic have exposed deep-rooted issues in the political economies of Europe and beyond, and hinted at the potentialities of political and social methods beyond the neoliberal capitalist paradigm. Against this backdrop, this thesis demonstrates how in Madrid, anarchists and other leftist radicals manipulate space, performance and capitalist notions of political action in order to construct - and live - optimistic and alternative socialities.

I introduce the concept of “conceptual creation” to suggest that various “realities” - at the physical, social and metaphysical levels - are brought into being, manipulated and reformulated by my interlocutors, under the influence of a “framework for living” afforded to them by their understandings and conceptions of anarchism: what it is, what it does, and what it can do. I demonstrate how this leads my participants to a concept of “the good”, and encourages them to work towards it.

As a result, this research makes interventions into current anthropological and conceptual debates concerning ethics, prefiguration, performance and the notion of the real. It ultimately suggests a reconfiguration of thinking - in the academy and in politics - on revolution and the possibilities and potentialities of radical practice.

Date of Award	29 Jun 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Paloma Gay Blasco (Supervisor) & Adam Reed (Supervisor)