The Global Justice Movements in Spain

It was only in 2000, after the protests in Seattle, that the global justice movements (GJMs) started to capture public attention in Spain. ¹ During the Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings, the (limited) protest events taking place in Spain received little coverage (usually in the local media) and were not labeled, in any case, as part of the new global movement. ² The leading newspaper El País, for instance, began to refer to the “movimiento antiglobalización” and the involvement of Spanish activists in the course of the year 2000 as a consequence of the protests in Millau, France (June), Nice (December), and, above all, Prague (September). The numerous Spaniards in Prague and, especially, their high presence among the protesters arrested, marked the entrance of the Spanish GJMs into the public eye (quite often because of the spread of images covering the symbolic violence practiced at counter-summits). Nevertheless, protests taking place in Spain remained small and almost neglected by the media until 2001, when they began to be noticed as a consequence of the campaigns against the World Bank in Barcelona, and, most of all, the Spanish European Union (EU) presidency during the first semester of 2002.