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This chapter examines new subjectivities and their contradictions in the 15M movement (also known as the Indignados). It considers the creation of small ‘tent cities’ in the plazas at the start of the movement and how it intensified the coordination of different abilities that was taking place online in support of protesters in the plazas. It argues that the 15M movement avoided participation in the hierarchical, competitive logics of the neoliberal cultural authority that was being blamed for the economic crisis in Spain and strengthened a cultural model based on mutual empowerment. It explains how this model emerged as one of the main elements of a new political and cultural ‘climate’, underpinning many other collective processes such as those of the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca, Marea Blanca, and Marea Granate. It also discusses the ways that intellectuals and the mass media have tried to discredit the ‘cultures of anyone’ arising from the ‘15M climate’.

This chapter examines the modes of constructing alternatives to the tradition of cultural authoritarianism and neoliberalism by focusing on institutions that try to offer permanent life spaces for the ‘cultures of anyone’. It considers the cultural and political project Trafiantes de Sueños (TdS), which belongs to the Fundacón de los Comunes network, to highlight the successes achieved by self-managed spaces that base their ability to decommodify and democratize meaning production on the daily support of communities. It also looks at a public institution, such as Medialab-Prado, and the harassment it suffers, showing that such harassment is contrary to the growing civic interest in bringing the logics of democratic self-management to the public sphere. Finally, it discusses the Plan Estratégico de la Cultura de Madrid (PECAM) and the role of experimentation in constructing truly democratic cultures in cultural institutions.

This book examines the tensions between cultural authority and the so-called ‘cultures of anyone’ that have reemerged time and again during Spain's economic crisis of 2008. It considers how these cultures of anyone, which arose mostly around grassroots social movements and in collaborative spaces fostered by digital technology, promote processes of empowerment and collaborative learning and create ‘collective intelligence’. The book first discusses the emergence of a new layer of powerful disciplines and institutions that has been deposited over Spain's long tradition of cultural authoritarianism. It then explores some of the disagreements and alternatives that confronted the model of cultural authority during the neoliberal crisis. Drawing on feminist theories of social reproduction, it analyzes aspects of ‘cultural autonomy’ relative to knowledge monopolies and the competitive mechanisms of neoliberalism. Finally, it describes the difficulties in creating stable cultural institutions that can function democratically.

This book concludes with a proposal that seeks to address the ways that categories like ‘cultures of anyone’ or ‘cultures of experts’ can help strengthen the democratization processes described in the previous chapters. It asks whether it makes sense to develop a story that tries to connect such disparate historical processes as Francoist developmentalism and the ‘15M climate’ in the neoliberal crisis. The book also considers the possibility of supporting from within academic institutions a democratization that stands up to centuries of cultural and social stratification aggravated by neoliberal inequality. Finally, it explains how ‘cultures of anyone’ were able to build a collective sense of their lives that includes everyone, and how it can be replicated.