ABSTRACT
We try to explain how in Spain the academics who are adherents to the penal system abound, but many academics are also highly critical of the negative effects of prisons (few are abolitionists). With regards to Spanish social movements, we confirm that the most active and historical of them likewise do not dare to confirm with certitude that they are abolitionists. They dedicate their energies towards bettering the living conditions of prisoners rather than forming more structured abolitionist discourses for all society. We highlight the importance of the collective groups and their activities in their regions which serve as tools for working on a small scale but which have been proposing far-reaching discourses. Finally, we want to highlight the great importance that activist and theoretical feminism has in boosting academic and social advances in favor of abolitionism. We believe that this encounter between feminism and abolitionism is not only fortunate but absolutely necessary for both. We do not see this as a coincidence (nor do we consider it a coincidence that two of the most clearly abolitionist groups are feminist), nor is it a coincident that similar tendencies can be witnessed in the USA and Australia, for example.
